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HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




UBRARY OF THE 

GRADUATE SCHOOL 
OF EDUCATION 




V. — - I 1 



'•I. ■• t- 



I 



THE HOME SCHOOL 



V 



y' 



THE HOME SCHOOL 



OK 



HINTS ON HOME EDUCATION 



BY 



NORMAN MACLEOD 

MnriSTES OF BASONT PARISH, GIJISGOW. 



** Train tip a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
will not depart from it."— Pro v. audi. 6. . 



EDINBURGH: PATON AND RITCHIE 

LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 

GLASGOW: T. MURRAY AND SON 

MDCCCLVIT 



ttMlVARO UMVSRSTY 

fil^^DUATE SCHOOL OF EOOCATIOli- 

MONROE C GUTMAN UBRAfcT 




^^^/e^/^^/ 



B 









DEDICATED 



S0 mg Jat^K anb mg Pot^tt 



WHO HAYA BLESSED AND GLADDENED THEIS CHILDREN 



AND 



THEIR children's CHILDREN 



** Accipe librum 



Saepe vel e minimis floribus halat odor/* 



r 



PREFACE. 



The contents of the following volume are made up 
chie% of papers contributed at different periods to 
the Edinburgh Christian MagazvMy and addresses deliv- 
ered to meetings of parents held in the school districts 
of my parish. Had these " Hints" been written 
continuously for publication, they should have had 
more unity of design, and been better proportioned 
in their several parts. I am quite sure, however, that 
if I delayed publication until I had realized my own 
ideas even, as to the right manner of treating the sub- 
ject, I should never have published at all ; and duty 
tells me to do the best I can, though I cannot do the 
best I wish ; while I am sternly reminded, by rapidly 
passing years, of the advice of the Preacher, " Whatso- 
ever thy h.9,TX^Jindeih to do, do it with all thy might." 

This volume makes no pretence whatever to origi- 
nality, which, after all, is probably the last thing we 
care to find in any counsel, asked or given, to help us 
to discharge our duties. What people call truisms and 
commonplaces, are often those very truths about com- 
mon things, which we require most to be reminded of; 
lest, while gazing on some brilliant meteor in the dis- 



Viii PBEFACE. 

tant skj, we may stumble in our path, or fall into a 
ditch at our feet. 

Bums, in his memorable " Cottar's Saturday Night," 
has described, with equal truth and beauty, that pious 
family life, which, in his days, was perhaps more 
general than it is now among the peasant homes of 
Scotland. I may be pardoned for quoting one of the 
well-known stanzas : — 

" The oheerftt* supper done, wi* cerions &ce 
Tbey round the ingle form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace. 
The big ba* Bible, ance bis fatber*s pride ; 
His bonnet reverently is laid aside, 
His lyart haffsts wearin* thin and bare ; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 
He wales a portion with judicious care. 
And, * Let us worship God,' he says with solemn air.** 

But while such domestic piety is still cultivated in our 
country generally more than elsewhere on earth, it 
is, I fear, in some danger of suffering from the pre- 
sent state and habits of society. The severe toil, late 
and early, in the workshop or counting-house; the 
absorbing love of gain; the ceaseless ^'movement;" 
the constant bustle ; the intense excitement, sadly in- 
terfere with the earnest and quiet duties of the family. 
Life is becoitiing so public, that meetings and com- 
mittees, minutes and resolutions about everything 
under the sun, are apt to rob the family circle, too 
frequently, of those who ought to be its best and most 
useful members. There is, also, in some quarters, a 
tendency to sink the parent and the family in the 



PBBFACE. ix 

prieet and tlie Church; in others to sink all these 
together in the dead sea of selfish individualism :— 

*' How, then, can we escape 
Sadness and keen regret ?— we, who revere 
And would preserre, above a& price. 
The old domutie morcUt of Uu land.** 

I cannot, therefore, think that an attempt, however 
limnble, is at present uncalled for, to quicken and 
|Btrengthen the claims of that unobtmsive piety, that 
peaceful fireside culture of the mind and afiections, 
*which can make any home sunny and happy, and the 
world, in spite of all its cares and sorrows, look still 
l>right and beautiful ; nor is it unnecessary to be re- 
^minded of the immense moral power, the dignified and 
'elevating responabilities of parental education. 

Being now in my third parish, and several years in 
'each of the others, all large and populous, I may be 
Ipardoned, perhaps, for presuming to give advice upon 
bo difficult and delicate a subject as that of the home 
^hool; for I cannot be wholly ignorant o^ far less 
indifferent to, the present condition of our families, 
^th their more obvious defects and requirements ; and 
to meet those, I have often, as a pastor, felt the want 
of some such book as I have now prepared. 

I know that parents have been benefited by these 
** Hints," already given elsewhere in the manner 1 
have mentioned, which encourages me to hope that 
more good may be done by them in a more connected 
form. This is all I wish ; and I shall really feel thank- 
fill if any benefit, however small, is received by those 



X PREFACE. 

who may differ much with me ^n the truth of some of 
my views, or in the. wisdom of some of my counsels. 

^ere are deeply interesting questions connected 
with home education, such as public schools and 
public '* charities,*' in their relationship to the family, 
that I have not touched upon, from my desire not to 
enlarge the volume. 

Should any one truly interested in this subject take 
the trouble of reading and criticising what I have 
written, it will be kind in him, if he engages in the 
easy task of detecting faults, to grapple, at the same 
time, earnestly with the more needful and difficult one 
of pointing out how something better may be accom- 
plished. Without forgetting that << there is a time to 
break down," we should also remember that '^ there is 
a time to build up:" and builders up are needed in our 
^7 to give us positive realities, more, perhaps, than 
breakers down, ta expose and destroy our so-called 
"shams." May this book prove a fitting, though a 
small stone, in the great social edifice, or prompt others 
to build up a larger portion of its sacred wall I 

One hint more, and I will bring my too long and 
too egotistical preface to a conclusion. It is this: 
As much of what is here published was originally in- 
tended for the working classes, perhaps some of my 
readers may take fitting opportunities of directing their 
attention to its most useful portions: for, let me re- 
mind those who express a wish to do good by instruct- 
ing their poorer neighbours, — ^yet ask almost in despair 
how this can be done, — that many of these cannot read 



PREFACE. XI 

for themselyes ; many more read so ill that little sense 
can be gathered from the rude attempt ; while othera 
wW can read easily, may not be able to procure books. 
In such circumstances, therefore, much good may be 
accomplished by educated persons, in small meetings 
of working people, reading aloud, and, if necessary, 
explaining and illustrating such tracts or books as they 
think would be helpful to them. Useful book-reading 
thus saves much useless speaking, and is often a gain 
where mere book-distributing would be profitless. 



1 



k 



<? 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L PAQK 

A. FEW WORDS TO PABENTS ON THB IMPOBTANCB OF 

THBIB CHILDRBN, . . • . 1 

CHAPTER IL 

THI BABTHLT AND HEAVENLY PABBNT, . . 14 

CHAPTER m. 

CHBIBTZAN BAPTISM AND CHBISTIAN EDUCATION, . 23 

CHAPTER rv. 

A FEW WOBDS ON TRAINING, • • • • 33 

CHAPTER V. 

CHRISTIAN BDTTCATION IN RIQHT FEELINGS TOWARDS 

GOD, • • • • • • 48 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 



PkGK 



HABITS. BIGHT FEELINGS TOWARD PABEKTS—OBEDI- 
BNCB — SELF-SACBiriCB — INDUSTRY — PERSBYER- 
ANCB — TRUTH — HONESTY, MRS. WESLBY'S 

TRAINING OF HER FAMILY, ... 57 

CHAPTEE VII. 

TRAINING. BY EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT, . • 84 

CHAPTER Vni. 

TRAINING. WITH LOYE — ^FIRMNESS*— PBRSBYBRANCB — i 

AND WATCHFULNESS, . . . . 106 

CHAPTER IX. 

PRAYER, ...... 120 

CHAPTER X. 

RESULTS. ENCOURAGEMENT TO CHRISTIAN PARENTS — 

DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS— CONCLUSION, • 137 



HOME EDUCATIOlir. 



CHAPTER L 

A VEW WORDS TO PABENTS OK THB IMPOBTAKOE OF 

THBIB OHLLDBEN. 



" Take he«d that ye despiae not one of these little ones t for I say unto 
jon. That in hearen their angels do always behold the face of my Father 
wbioh is in heaten.** 



Ghbistiak Pabeihs of the WoBKato Classes! — I 
address this first chapter specially to you, though 
I hope it will be found useful to others who perhaps 
have fewer difficulties and temptations to ccmtend 
against. 

I wish parents to see dearly, an^ feel deejay, the tm- 
portance of their children; that so they may consider 
with serious thought, the nature and importance of the 
Education which ought to be given to them at Home. 

A working man, especially in a great city, is apt to 
think that neither he nor his family are of any im- 
portance whatever. What is he, or they, to this great 
thronging, busy, and bustUng world! Who cares 
whether he is ill or wdi, in joy or sorrow, alive or 



2 HOME EDUCATION. 

deadt Of whaA importance are those children to 
any human being beyond the walls of his lonely home ? 
The great tide of human life rushes past his door as 
ignorant and heedless of all within, as the tide of ocean 
is of the dwellers on the shore which its billows lave ! 
Nevertheless, you and your children, my brother, are 
of more importance than the tongue can express, or 
the mind fully comprehend. Let us consider the mat- 
ter a little with reference to your children. 

1. Tour children are of great importance to society. 
It is you who supply our factories with hands, our 
ships with seamen, our army with soldiers, and our 
houses with servants. Upon the character of those 
whom you send forth every year to the world depend 
the good and the happiness of millions. In your houses 
the real prosperity of the nation is determined more 
than in the Houses of Parliament. In the name of 
thousands, I say, Have mercy upon us! — ^and give us 
sober, industrious, honest men and women. 

Are your sons to be employed as workmen ? K so^ 
they are of importance to their fellow-workmen and 
employers. They •an become a strength or weakness, 
a blessing or curse, to both. Let us then have sober 
steady men, whose words and example will be health 
and comfort to all around them. Give us, also, those 
to whom we can entrust our money and our property 
in our shops and counting-houses ; and to whom we 
can entrust our lives when travelling under their guid- 
ance by land or sea. But, oh I deliver us from the 
blaspheming infidel, the filthy sensualist, the insane 



^ 



BO^E EDUCATION. 8 

dnmkard, the coarse and rude savage, the leader of 
riots, the contriver of plots, the sponter of nonsense, 
the preacher of rebellioni the instigator of strikes, and 
the tyrant of aU ! 

Are joxsr daoghters to be servants in our houses ? 
Give us such as are sometimes to be found, whom we 
can trust, respect, and cherish, as valued friends of the 
^mily ; in whose keeping oar goods, our character, our 
children, are safe. But save us, we beseech of jou, 
from the domestic affliction of a dishonest, lying, quar- 
relling, disobedient, rude, selfish, or unfaithful servant, 
who, though leaving her place as soon as possible, may 
only make way for another of the same description 1 

In the n&me, too, of many a young tradesman, we 
implore that the wife whom he receives from your 
firende may be such an one as can be a companion 
for an intelligent Christian man ; an economical house- 
keeper for a working man; a Christian mother to 
his children : and not a thoughtless, handless, tawdry 
slattern, who keeps her house like a pig-stye, and her 
children like pigs; who idles her time in gossiping 
with her neighbours, or even in drinking with them 
—for such companionship of mothers is by no means 
rare ! — ^thus driving her husband to ruin and misery, 
and tempting him to riot or desertion. 

Once more, in the name of the Christian Church, I 
pray you to spare no pains to confer upon us the 
unspeakable blessing of attentive hearers, reverential 
worshippers, and intelligent, well-principled members, 
who will help the Church in every scheme of Christian 



4 HOME KDUOATIOK. 

us^fulaeBS, and not only be the friends of missions to 
the heatfien abroad, but also fill up that great gap in 
society of being themsdyes missionaries, by their words 
and life, to the heathen at home, among whom they 
reside and labour. Kind neighbours to the poor, 
sympathizing friends of the sick, examples of piety to 
the unbelieyersy are wanted in our country villages, in 
the lanes and sitreets of our eities, where the working 
e]|fjksses alone reside, and your firesides can furnish 
such ! We want Christian wcnrking meci and women 
to strengbhea OTur congregations by the urbanity of their 
manner% the stfedfieistness of their attachments, and the 
soi^nduess of their principles; who will not forsake 
the assembling of themselves together, but consider 
one anottier^and provoke to love and good works; and 
your houses may thus be helpful to the house of Grod ! 
Shall ypUi by ignorance or neglect> not only deprive us 
of sujsh goodf but add to those social evils, under which 
we already groan ? Will you «npty our diiirches, and 
crowd our whisky shops T Will you only increase our 
heathen at home, and that godless population who are 
our weakness and disgrace ?— ^or, if you land your 
children in our churches, will they, from want of 
proper tra],iuqg» prove a constant anxiety and weak* 
ness to us ; — slothful,, yet busy with everything but theiff 
own duties ; schismatics,, and never united but when 
causing divisioix; ]^oud, and seeking to rule eveiy 
person but thexaselves; vain, ever esteeming them-» 
sdves better than others ; selfish, and never pleasing 
iimr neighbours for their good or for their edification ; 



BOHE EDUCATIOir. 5 

presumptuous and self-willed, thinking evil of dignities ; 
a little leaven, yet leavening with evil the whole lump ? 
Oh ! parents, think how much the well-being of Christ- 
ian congregations depends upon the early training you 
give to those who furnish the vast majority of their 
members ! 

And, ffnally, how do you know but those children 
of yours are destined to play a great part in the world, 
and one which may be so good or bad, as that millions 
may rejoice or mourn because of them? You know 
that many men, whose names are famous in history, 
have come from the firesides of the poor. Generals, 
admirals, judges, ministers, legislators, ay, and kings 
too ! So have great and notorious criminals. So have 
thousands upon thousands who have become wealthy, 
and, as citizens, employers, magistrates, exercised an 
immense influence upon the good and happiness of the 
nation. Some such may now be at your fireside 1 

Had Simon thought of what his son Judas might 
have been, would this not have afiTected his borne 
education of the boy ? What if the mother of Napo- 
leon, and of his brother kings and sister queens, had 
considered what those might possibly become who 
were around her humble fireside in Corsica f " What 
a charge that would have been T* you perhaps exclaim. 
But you wiU see, by and by, that this is nothing when 
compared with what your children may yet become as 
immortal beings. But enough, I hope, has been said 
under this head to make you feel that, even in so far 
as this world is concerned, your boys and girls, wbo 



6 nOlIE EDUCATION. 

are growing Up atound you to be men and Wotnen, 
are of immenae and incalcnlable importance to sodetj. 
Have a care, tfhen, how you bring them up I 

2. I mudt come nearer home, and remind you that 
those little ones are of gfeat importance to yourselves, I 
ani sure you feel this, at all events, to be true. Oh ! 
how important are they! They are your most elo- 
quent* preachers } your most skilful physicians ; your 
most powerful masters ! They strengthen you for 
labour, and refresh you when at rest. They rouse 
you up, and send you out in the early morning, 
and make you glad to return home at nighL That 
child who climbs your knee, twines its arms around 
your neck, and kisses your rough cheek, has more 
power over you than all the police in the city or than 
all the armies of the world, were they arrayed against 
you ! Its ¥nnning, confiding look will make you pause 
in your mad career more than cannon if pointed at you ! 
Its smile holds you fast ad no iron chain can do ; 
and its fond caressings will often calm your wild heart, 
and make yourself a child. It would be nothing, 
indeed, to the world, if that little light were extin* 
guished; but would it not be darkness to your own 
home? Many an afflicted parent has had no other 
cord binding the heart to earth save a tender infant ; 
and, but for that, the grave would be a bed of peace, 
and to be with Christ ^ better ; and when that babe 
is removed, the little green spot where it lies interred 
seems to be the whole world to the lonely mourner. 
"Save my child !" has often been the last cry amidst 



HOMB EDUCATION. 7 

desolation, from one who cared for nought else, and 
knew ail else was lost ! That parent has Indeed sunk 
lower than the beasts that perish, when he is no longer 
thus influenced by the love of his children I 

You cannot, then, say — ^you surely never even thought 
— that your children are nothing to you f You feel that 
your happiness even now is bound up in what they 
(sre. And when they leave the domestic roof, will you 
not be thankful and proud if they turn out well, and 
are honoured and respected by the world ? - Will you 
not feel their shame and dishonour to be your own? 
Will their well-doing not be a crown of glory to you 
in old age; and would not their iU-doing help to 
bring down your grey hairs with sorrow to the 
grave T Therefore, apart from any other or higher 
consideration, for your own sokes have a care how you 
train them up. 

A strong working man once came to me requesting 
the ordinance of baptism for his child. He was a 
smith, and confessed that he had formerly been in 
the habit of drinking to excess, but for two years 
had lived a strictly sober life. On my asking what 
led to this change, he replied, after some hesitation : 
"Indeed, I believe it was the bairns:' " The bairns ! " 
I exclaimed, "how was that?" — "Why, sir," said 
he, " when I came home at night they used to run and 
meet me, and play about me ; and the youngest was 
a special favourite, and extraordinary fond of me; 
and one evening when she had her arms about my 
neck, and was giving me a kiss, the thocht struck me. 



8 HOME EDUCATION. 

What a beast I was to be taking drink in this way, if 
it was for no other reason than the harm I was sure 
to do to baith the bodies and souls of my ain bairns. 
I took such shame to myself, that I dropped it since 
then; and now I hope I have better reasons, even 
than the good of the family, for keeping sober." 

3. But consider, further, the personal as well as 
relative importance of these children, or their import- 
ance to themsdveB. You know how one's own state 
for time and for eternity is of more importance to 
themselves than anything else possibly can be. It is 
this fact which the words of our Lord imply, when 
He says : "For what is a man profited if he shall 
gain the whole world and losahis own soul?-— or what 
shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? ** Not 
anything ! — ^not the whole universe ! To a man him- 
self, his own soul — ^his own life and happiness, are 
more valuable than all else. Now, parents, weigh 
this matter weU.' Behold your children, or any one 
of them, and hear what I have to say about that one 
child, 

(1.) That child must live for ever. Its existence is 
endless as the liie of its Maker. There lies concealed 
in that frame, clasped to a mother's bosom, and so 
feeble that the evening breeze might seem sufficient to 
destroy it, a living spark which no created power can 
ever extinguish ! Cities and empires shall rise and 
&11 during coming centuries ; but that infant of yours 
will survive them all ! The world and its works shall 
be burnt up, and the elements melt with fervent heat ; 



HOUE EDUCATION. 9 

new syatems in the starry heavens may be created and 
pass away ; but your child will live amidst the changes 
and revolutions of endless ages^ which will no more 
touch or destroy it than the wild hurricane can touch 
the rainbow that reposes in the sky, though it may 
rage around its lovely form. When eras that no arith- 
metic can number have marked the life of your child, 
an eternity will stiU be before it, in which it shall Hve, 
move, and have its being I What think you, parents, 
of having such a creature as this under your roof, and 
under your charge, and that creature your own child T 
Consider, 

(2.) Y<mr chM must live for ever m bliss or woe. 
It must stand before the judgment-seat of i Christ. It 
must be for ever lost or for ever saved. It must be 
with God and Christ, with the angels and saints, 
loving and belored, a glorious and majestic being, or 
for ev^ wicked and unutterably miserable with Satan 
and lost spirits I I am assuming, of <iourse, that it 
here attains such an age as makes it fully respon- 
sible to God ; for if it die in infancy, I believe it 
will be saved through Jesus Christ. But to know 
that your babe, though dead, actually lives somewhere 
with Jesus ; or that, if living here, it is yet capable 
of becoming one of God's high and holy family in 
His home above for ever — may well deepen within 
you a sense of its personal value I Now, whether 
your child — should it be spared some years on earth 
— shall live for ever in joy or sorrow, depends upon 
what it believes and does in this world. It is how 



10 HOME EDUOATIOK. 

t^ lives kercj which must d^teitoine where and how it 
shall live hepeafief, la that not a solemn consideration 
for jrou? And is it txoi more solemn stUl, when jou 
rememher, that you^ more than any other in this worlcL 
shall, under God, fie your children's fate for ever f The 
reason is plain ; inasmuch as their character for time, 
and therefore for eternity, is affected chiefly by the 
manner in which they are trained by you in their early 
years. By your words and life, by your example and 
your instruction, you are most assuredly every day 
msiking use of what is to them, for many a day, the 
greatest power on earth, to give their souls, when most 
easily impressed, that stamp which they wiU retain 
for ever. Have a care, then, how you train them up ! 
"Has any one," says a late pious and eloquent 
minister of the Church of England, " ever stood on a 
pier, within which some vessel floated which no storm 
wave had yet tossed? But now it sails forth, its 
canvass spread, its crew alert, its freight secured, its 
destination registered. You marked its progress j&x>m 
the harbour to the open sea. It feels the helm, it 
ploughs the wave, it begins its course. The skies are 
chequered, the clouds gather, the winds are strong. 
You felt an interest in the voyage which that vessel 
was to make ; you thought ,of the hazards of the sea, 
of thfe perils of her course ; you thought of storm and 
struggle, of possible loss and shipwreck, or of a sunny 
and joyous entrance into the distant haven beyond the 
present flood, where the mariners were to find an ex- 
pected home ; you breathed a prayer that God would 



HOME EDUCATION. 11 

be their guide, their guardian, and their friend. And 
what is each little child, though now inexperienced of 
life's changes, what but such a vessel bound on a long 
voyage, sailing across a wild sea, exposed to howling 
winds and rains, passing by many a reef, and in peril 
of rocks and breakers I How fearful the shipwreck of 
such a vessel! how blessed its calm arrival on Ihe 
everlasting shore ! Who would not pray, that of each 
such vessel, of each such child, God may be the guar- 
dian and the guide — His own eye be upon its course— 
His own pilotage at its helmt" 

4. But I notice, lastly, that your children are of in- 
estimable importance to their Father in heaven. Perhaps 
you are disposed at first to doubt this ; but consider 
it, and you will see how true it is. God being so 
great and glorious, you think that probably a child 'is 
too small and insignificant a thing to be noticed or 
cared for by Him. But it is just because God u so 
great and glorious that He is able to know and con- 
sider every person and thing in the universe. " Are 
not five sparrows sold for two farthings ; yet not one 
of them is forgotten before God ? Fear not ; ye are 
of more value than many sparrows I'^ 

It was perhaps this wrong impression of God's 
greatness, which, or one occasion, induced the dis- 
ciples to prevent mothers bringing their children to 
ihe Saviour to obtain His blessing. How could the 
great Messias, thought they, condescend to attend to 
such weak and insignificant creatures? But very 
different were His own feelings 1 " Suffer little child- 



12 HOME EDUCATION* 

ren to come to me, and forbid them not ! " and accord- 
ingly the good Shepherd took the lambs into His arms 
and blessed them. 

Who gave the heartiest welcome to the King when 
He entered the temple? Not the priests, nor Sad- 
ducees, nor Pharisees, but the children who cried Ho- 
sanna! Those who pretended to great wisdom and 
piety rebuked them, and wished Christ to do the 
same ; but He would not. He received the praises of 
the ybung; for God had ordained such to come from 
the mouths even of babes and sucklings. 

Why should this astonish you, parents? " O ye of 
little faith, wherefore do ye doubt ? " For only reflect 
for a moment upon the relationship in which God 
stands to those children. They belong to Him, and are 
His property, not yours. He it is who has given them 
all the value which they possess. He it is who has 
created them, and endowed them with such wonderful 
powers and capacities, in order that, as the very end 
of their being, they might glorify Him, and enjoy Him 
for ever. And such immense value does He attach to 
those His own creatures, that He redeemed them, not 
with such corruptible things as silver and gold, — for 
these could not purchase the least and poorest of them, 
— ^but with the precious blood of His own Son I 

What more is needed to shew the awful importance 
of a child, than the fact that Jesus Christ was himself 
a child ! 

Remember, then, parents, that God has given you 
this precious property of His in trust; and of each 



HOME EDUCATION. 13 

child beneath your roof He says: << Nurse this child 
forme!** 

"A Babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace 

and love : 
A resting-place for innocence on earth : a Unk between angels and 

men. 
Tet is it a talent of trust ; a loan to be rendered back with interest/* 

Have a care, then, I again say, how you train them 
up '* in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,^* 

^^ Take heed that ye despise not one of these little 
ones : for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels 
do always behold the fiice of my Father which is in 
lieaven,*' 



14 



CHAPTER IL 

THE EARTHLY AKI> HEAVElfLY PARENT. 
*' Oar Father which art in heaven.** 

<< The family " is Grod'e own institutioii ; and was tlie 
first — ^unless we except the Sabbath — ordained bj 
Him for the education of the children of men. He 
brought the woman unto the man, and Adam said : 
" This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh ;" 
— '< Therefore shall a man leave his father and his 
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." 

Its importance to the well-being of the human race 
can hardly be exaggerated. It is the nursery of the 
state, of the Church, and of heaven. 

So holy is the union of husband and wife, from 
which comes the relationship of parent and child, that 
it is likened to the union which subsists between Jesus 
the bridegroom, and His Church the bdde. No lower 
measure, no lower kind of love, is set before the hus- 
band to his wife than the love of Christ to His Church; 
while her love and reverence, in return, is compared to 
the love and reverence which the Church owes her Lord. 

When Jesus was dying on the cross, and thereby 

glorifyiug the government of God, He honoured in 

that hour the holy bonds of family when He con- 

* sidered His mother's sufierings and wants, and said : 

" Son, behold thy mother ! Woman, behold thy son !" 



HOllE SDUCATIOK. 15 

The socialist, who, with impious hand, would destroy 
this institute, displays greater ignorance, and, if suc- 
cessful, would produce more disorder in God's universe 
than if he attempted and succeeded in putting his 
hand among the stars, and disturbing the power that 
keeps them in the beautiful order which, to the ear of 
the understanding, is the music of the spheres. 

Of all the names bj which God has revealed him- 
self^ no one is so endearing to us, or more full of 
deep and tender meaning, than that of ** our Father ** 
in heaven. 

Now, when He calls himsel&a Father, and desires — 
as the very sum and substance of religion — ^that we 
should be to Him as '^ sons and daughters," " child- 
ren of God," He thereby intends us to learn something 
of the nature of the relationship subsisting between 
himaftlf and His children, from what we know of the 
reladonship subsisting between ourselves and our child- 
ren. And so, upon the other hand, He would have 
parents learn how they should educate their children 
for heaven, by knowing how He educates themselves^ 
Thus the true idea of Home Education is, to be in all 
things to our children as like as possible to what Grod 
is to us, — to be reflections of Him in the fiimily, — to 
be living witnesses for Him, — to be, in one word, 
godhf or godlike parents. 

In some respects a parent cannot help being like 
God. He is so by nature ; for what is so vivid a pic- 
ture of God the Creator, Preserver, Provider, Com- 
forter of His family, than the earthly parent, to whom 



DucAnoN. 



who upholds and guides its 
supplies hd daily returning 
i yeama over it with a Ioyb 
ithom, and, for a time, but 
>ry imperfectly return. Yet 
Luntary on the part of the 
ctive, inasmuch as he does 
hink of God at all, or desire 
like Him; but reflects His 
9 the beasts that perish, in 
reflect the glory of Him who 
ts so tender and beautifdl. 
Grod, — when he is himself a 
the spirit of adoption has 
of confidence and love, by 
lying: "Abba, Father!" — 
with the character of that 
L He is educating himself for 
ruly apprehended, in some 
which God imparts in His 
)mise, by warning and en- 
lercies and severe ehastlse- 
Ltience or sudd^i inflictions, 
elf up in the way he should 
iscorered the true secret of 
abould give his own child, 
that model of heavenfy per- 
il his home education in the 
dren will thus naturally rise 
r to knowing the heavenly 



HOME EDUCATION. 17 

parent* The one will be a reflection of the other, 
comparativelj dim, no doubt, but still one of the 
truest on earth ! The parent is a ladder, man j a fttep 
of which will be broken, but still by it the child is 
enal^ed to climb upwardf* The parent is the earthlj 
pole around which it twines its early affections, and 
fastens its weak tendrils, and though it is perishing, 
and of itself unfit to be a permanent support, it may, 
nevertheless, lead the young plant towards heaven, 
and be its strength and stay until it finally reaches, 
and for ever clings to the '' Rock of Ages !" 

This is the high model, parents, which I would set 
before you !-— to live before your children, to educate 
them, that you may train them up, and gradually pre* 
pare them to know God from Jirst knowing you ; and thus 
to understand God's ways to themselves in after life from 
first learning your lessons in the home school. You 
may not be able to lead th^m £bu: ; but as far as you 
gOyl^fthein th$ right directum. You may not be able 
to teach them many lessons ; but such as they are let 
them be in harmony with, and a right introduction 
to, those deeper ones which God will afterwards im- 
paart. In what you are and in what you do ; in your 
truthfulness, righteousnessy kindness, firmness, forbear* 
ance, forgiveness, sympathy, watchfulness, justice, 
love ; in your rewards and punishments ; in your eda* 
caHefif in short, be to tibem, as far as possible, what 
God is to you, and will be also to them. 

All this assumes that the children have not reached 
those years of understanding and thought when they 
are, as it were, out of your hands, and dismissed from 



18 H03IB EDUCATIOK. 

jour school, more directly to learn from Grod himself, 
and to act solely on their own personal responsibility, 
independent of your authority and immediate control. 
Until this time comes, they will look to you, and hear 
you, and understand you, as they can no one else ; and 
you, the earthly parent, must be to them, for many a 
day, almost in the place o£ Grod. Oh ! that they may 
be able, when they become acquainted with the great 
God as their Father in heaven, to recognize in His 
infinite glory the light which they saw truly reflected 
in that earthly form whom they first called by the 
same endearing name, and whom they first honoured 
and obeyed with reverential fear, believed and trusted 
with implicit confidence, and loved with heart, soul, 
and strength I Thus would the school of home be the 
school for heaven ! 

Parents ! do consider this earnestly, and try to 
realize it. It is very true, that ^' the best men are but 
men at the best," and will come far short of this model 
of perfection. But it is Jesus who says : " Be perfect, 
as your Father in heaven is perfect." Remember that 
those who aim high, while they may not come up to 
the mark that is higher, yet come very much nearer it 
than those who aim at the ground. 

You know how very unlike the training is which 
those parents, who even profess godliness, give their 
children to that I have been speaking about; nay, 
how often is it quite of an opposite character I Let 
me ask you a few homely questions on this point, to 
illustrate more fully and plainly what I have said. 

Do you ever break your word to your children f — 



HOME EDUCATION. 19 

IF SO, is this being like God to them ! — ^Does He ever 
£Biil to keep EQs word to 70a ? 

Do 70U give way to angry, unreasonable passion 
with your children? — ^If so, is this God's method with 
youf 

Do you wish your children to be clever, wealthy, 
or prosperous, rather than to h^ goody and do you train 
them up accordingly? — ^Is it for such ends God is first 
educating you ? 

Are you hard, unfeeling, unsympathizing, unforgiv- 
ing to your children ? — ^Is Grod so to you ? 

Are you so indifferent as not to chastise your child- 
ren when they require it? — ^Will Grod thus deal with 
you? 

Do you chastise from hate, and not for good? — 
Does He so deal with you ? 

I need not enlarge my catechism. You see, I hope, 
clearly what is meant by educating your children in 
the spirit with which God, your own Father, educates 
yourselves. 

But, perhaps, you ask me, how this can be accom- 
plished? On this point I cannot here enter at any 
length. One or two hints, however, may help your- 
selves to obtain the truth more fully. 

Learn first to he good children to your own Father in 
heaven, and this will best teach you how to he good parents 
to your own children on earth. 

Would you, for instance, like your children to love 
you? — ^Love, then, your own Father. Would you 
•like your children to obey you? — Obey your own 



20 HOMB EDUCATION. 

Father. WouM you like your children to op^ their 
hearts to you in sweet confiding intercourse, pouring 
out their sorrows^ confessing their faults, teiUing you 
their wants, expressing to you their joys, and reveal- 
ing to you their love ? Do all this to your own 
Father. 

Follow out this train of thoiight for yourselves, and 
it will lead you to further light on your personal and 
parental daties. 

And if you wish to have your affections, as children, 
kindled towards your heavenly Father, you may learn, 
even &om your feelings towards your awn children,' 
much to help you. You know the love which you 
bear them ; how deep and real it is ; how it began 
before your children could understand it, or return it ; 
how inseparable it is from your hatred to their sins ; 
and how it longs to impart to them every possible 
blessing I Is there no love in God to you like this, 
though infinitely deeper and more lasting t 

You know what you woidd do for your children's 
good: how m.uch you would sacrifice to make them 
happy ; how their cry of distress would awaken your 
pity ; and their pray^ns for help, though uttered with 
the imperfect lispings of a babe, touch your heart, and 
make you put forth all your strength to relieve them I 
Is there nothing in this which God^ who made youv 
heart so to feel, wishes to be a witness for him3elf ? 

^^ What man is there of you, whom if his son ask 
bread, will he give him a stone T Or if he ask a fisb^ 
will he give him a serpent?" Would any of yot^ 



HOmS BDUCATIOK. 21 

parents, so treat a starving child ? No ! '^ If ye then, 
being euHy know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, haw much mare shall your Father which is in 
hecBven give good things to them that ask Him ? " He 
who so spake knew God His Father, and revealed 
Him to us. 

<' Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she 
should not have compassion on the son of her womb ?" 
Mothers ! you have no doubt of such love to your child ; 
you only doubt of the reality of the love of Grod your 
Father to one of His own children I But what says 
He ? — " She may forget ; yet vnll I not forget thee /" 

"They who love not, know not God; for God is 
love/' "As a &ther pitieth his children, so the Lord 
pitieth them that fear Him." Lift up your hearts in 
prayer, and say, " Our FcUhery which art in heaven I '^ 

Xet I cannot close this chapter without beseeching 
you again and again to consider with deepest seriousness 
how essential it is that you should thus yourselves be 
good before you can possibly do good ; and how, in addi- 
tion to the great motive of saving your own soul, which 
should constrain every man to believe in Jesus, and to 
be personally holy, you, as parents, have the touching 
motive of saving the souls of your children, in as far as 
this can be accomplished by human instrumentality. 
Seldom do parents go single-handed to heaven or hell. 
Whatever mystery may be attached to the dispensa- 
tion, so it is, that the good or evil in the parent has an 
incalculable influence for good or evil on the child. 
This fact I shall probably recur to in a subsequent 



22 HOME EDUCATION. 

chapter, but I remind you of it here, and urge it upon 
you, to impress you more and more with the convic- 
tion, that the only way of acting towards your children 
by word and deed, as truly Christian parents, is to be 
Christian parents in very truth before your God 1 



23 



CHAPTER III. 

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM AND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

** AU power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing tbem in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatso. 
ever I have commanded you : and, lo, I am with yon aiway, even unto the 
end of the world. Amen." 

I DO not here attempt to give anything like a full 
explanation of the sacrament of baptism, but to notice 
it very briefly merely as connected with Christian 
education. 

Let me remind parents of some of those truths 
^< signified and sealed" by baptism, which ought to 
guide and encourage them to train up their children 
in the way they should go. 

1. In baptism, Crod reveals himself as the covenant 
€hd of your child. 

At the very time when you cannot but feel how awful 
a gift this immortal being is ; when, perhaps, you are 
wellnigh overwhelmed by a sense of the responsibility 
attached to the gift ; when all that your child may be 
rises before your soul, and questionings regarding its 
future destiny force themselves upon you with trembling 
anxiety, and in rapid interchanges of hope and fear, 
— ^then does God reveal himself in baptism, as claiming 
this child as His own, teaching and assuring you that it 
is not related to you alone, but much more to Him ; — 
that not to the bosom of its earthly parents, only is all 



24 HO]^ EDUCATION. 

love to it, and interest in it, confined ; but tkat He 
who is thy God and Father, is also the God and 
Father of thy child. 

This is, indeed, the blessed truth to which baptism 
witnesses, and which it confirms. To the individual 
child God thus says : ^^lam thtf Ood; — God thy Father, 
God thy Saviour, God thy Sanctifier. This is iny 
Name, and in it art thou baptized ; as I am thy cove^ 
nant God, so have I called thee by my name." Here, 
then, is a declaration, by a solemn ordinance, of afact^ 
not only of God's name as He is, Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, but also of the relationship in which this 
God stands to this individual child ; and if so, then a 
clear answer is given by baptism to such questions as 
these : " What is the living God to my child f Is He 
indeed its Father, and, as such, does He love it ? Is 
He indeed its Saviour, and, as such, is He willing to 
save it ? Is He indeed its Sanctifier, and, as such, is 
He willing to make it holy ?" Even so ! as sure as 
this child is baptized into His name 1 

Such a teaching as this, on God's part, or such a 
revelation of himself, is the more instructive from the 
very unconsciousness of the babe; — ^for what knows 
this child of God's existence, or of His love ! Nothing ! 
but this very fact impresses only more deeply upon us 
the all-important truth, "that God's love to us cannot, 
any more than His existence, be afiected by our know- 
ledge or belief. Behold that mother ! — how she bends 
over her child, and clasps it to her bosom, to draw its 
nourishment firom next her heart : — what knows her 



HOME EDUCATIOK. 25 

child o£ the reality of that love f or how much it will 
endure and sacrifice for its good and happiness? 
Yet the lore is there, though the child knows it not ; 
and though, alas! it may never be appreciated or 
returned. 

But why, it has been again asked, perform this cere- 
mony upon an immortal and responsible being wi^out 
its consent? — ^I reply, Because God is its God and 
Father, whether d consents ornott 

2. But notice, further, that baptism teaches the 
end of the child's existence^ or what it ought to be to 
God from what God is to it. By the Nome of God 
is meant His revealed character. When God proclaimed 
His Ncane to Moses, He did so by describing His char- 
acter. To be baptized in, or into the Name of God, 
indicates, that it is God's wish that this child should, 
as the very end of its being, share His character, or be 
made like himself; in other words, He thus declares it 
to be His revealed purpose that the child should be a 
spiritual child to Chd the Father^ through faith in Ood 
the SoHj as mediator, and in the possession of Ood the 
Holy Ghostj as sanctifier ; and thus glorify His Name ! 
This is practically the same truth as is expressed in 
the beautiful answer given to the question in the 
Shorter Catechism, "What is the chief end of man?" 
— " Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy 
Him for ever I" 

Therefore, parents, learn from baptism what God 
would have your children be educated for, — ^for no end 
less glorious than this — Himself ! 



26 HOME EDUCATION. 

A clear apprehension of this will necessarily affect 
joar whole system of education ; for just as you keep 
it before you will you employ those means by which it 
can alone be attained. Low and unworthy aims pro- 
duce low and unworthy labours. K you see in your 
children those whose only glory is to consist in riches, 
rank, or some other form of mere worldliness, you will 
train them up accordingly, as thus destined for time, 
and to enjoy and glorify self; but not as bom* for im- 
mortality, and to glorify and enjoy God. Let baptism 
remind you that they ought to be trained up in the way 
along which they should go for ever ; and to hallow 
that Name which is written on their foreheads ; and 
to walk worthy of God, who has thus called them to 
His kingdom and glory ! 

3. Baptism, moreover, offers to the child the two great 
blessings essentially necessary in order to its attaining 
the end of being made like God, and possessing His 
Name. These blessings are, the pardon of em through 
the blood of Christ, and the renewal and sanctification 
of nature by the washing of regeneration, and the gift 
of the Holy Ghost. 

The water used in baptism is a picture of those 
blessings. It " shews forth" the " blood of sprinkling," 
shed for the remission of the sins of many ; and also 
" the washing of regeneration." It speaks of the dis- 
ease and the remedy. It testifies of sin as being the 
moral defilement of the soul, which can be removed in 
its guilt only through the atonement of Christ for us ; 
and in its power, only by the work of the Spirit of God 



HOME EDUCATION. 27 

in US-— even as the filth of the hody is removed hj 
water. It teaches, moreover, that these remedies 
must be applied to each individual soul before the 
blessings which they confer can be enjoyed, even 
as water must be applied to the soiled body before it 
can become the means of cleansing it; and, lastly, this 
sprinkling with water testifies to the certainty and 
freeness with which God offers those specific blessings 
to the individual child, even as He reveals Himself to 
be its God. The language of baptism is : ^< As sure 
as I baptize this child with water, so sure do I, its 
Father, offer to take away its guilt through the blood 
of my Son, and to purify its nature through the power 
of my Spirit, and so to make it like Myself !" 

Now, these truths must, when believed in, have a 
marked practical bearing upon the aims and efibrts of 
the Christian parent. For instance, the fact of such 
blessings being ofiered, and therefore needed by the 
child, implies, that its nature is not that holy and 
innocent thing which poets describe it as being. 
If it were so, then the great object of education 
should be to keep the child as it is. But if its nature 
is corrupt in this sense even, that it possesses such 
a tendency to do evil, that evil it will assuredly, 
naturaUy^ and habitually do, the moment it comes 
to act as a responsible being; then must the parent 
ever desire for it, and seek to nourish in it, such a 
new and living principle of good, as God in Christ can 
alone bestow by the Spirit. When the child is born 
again, whether before baptism, at baptism, or in after 



28 HOME EDUOAllON. 

years, depends on that Holy Spirit who dispenses His 
gifts '^ as He will." But certain it is, that ^^ unless a 
man be bom of the Spirit, He cannot see the kingdom 
of God ;" consequentlj, all efforts at Christian educa- 
tion, without practically recognizing the absolute ne- 
cessity of the Almighty aid, obtained through that Name 
into which the child is baptized, must be vain, because 
it dther overlooks the end or the means. 

4. Finally, the Christian parent may be taught by 
the fact of his presenting his child for baptism, that he, 
of all on earth, is the person chiefly through whom 
God intends that child to obtain those blessings thus 
offered. 

I will not be led, in such practical hints as I wish 
these to be, into discussions regarding the times and 
ways in whidi God may save a child, whether with 
or without baptism ; at baptism, or before it ; with or 
without the parents' piety or instruction. What I 
wish Christian parents to see is, not what Gk>d may do 
without their instrumentality, but what, as a rule. He 
generally does ly it. 

I ask, therefore. By what means shall this child ever 
ascertain that any promises or offers have been made 
to it in baptism ? How shall it ever hear of that Name 
in which it has been baptized? How shall it be 
taught concerning God its Father, Saviour, and Sanc- 
tifier I For though it is true, " that whosoever shall 
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," and 
though this " promise is to us and our children," ancl 
has been sealed to each of them in baptism, yet " how 



HOME £DUCAIIOK. 29 

shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed t 
and how shall they believe in Him of whom they 
have not heard?'* And how, then, I may further ask, 
is the child to hear so as to believe and call on the Name 
of the Lord, and thus respond to the calling of itself 
by God? I reply, that it is God's design that this 
should come through the Christian parent The parent 
is selected as God's teacher, missionary, witness, and 
representative in the £unily, and to his children, as I 
have already, in the last chapter, explained to yon. 
Hence one reason why the ordinance of baptism is dis- 
pensed only in connexion with a believing Christian 
parent, because he (or, in the case of orphans, sponsors) 
wiU, through a Christian education, both impart to the 
child a knowledge of that Name — ^Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, in which the child has been baptized, and 
the import of those special blessings offered to it by its 
covenant Grod ; and also train it up, so that it shall 
believe in God as He is thus revealed, receive the bless- 
ings thus offered, and himself choose God as his 
Father, Saviour, and Sanctifier. It was thus that God 
made certain predous promises to Abraham and his 
seed, becentee He knew that Abraham would so train 
up his children as that those promises would be 
realized : — ^^ Shall I hide from Abraham that thing 
which I do ; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a 
great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the 
eaiih shall be blessed in him I For I know, that he wiU 
command hu ckddren atid hit household after him, and they 
shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judg- 



80 HOME EDUCATION. 

ment ; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that 
which He hath spoken of him." 

You thus perceive, that as personal faith on the part 
of the child, if it live to become responsible, is required 
before God's offers of mercy made at baptism can be 
of any avail ; and as it must choose God as its portion- 
before His Name can be glorified and enjoyed, it is the 
duty, the glorious privilege of the parent to convey 
that knowledge to his child, and to make it the very 
end and aim of all his labours, that G^d's gracious 
wishes shall be complied with. 

What a cheering and strengthening thought is this to 
a parent, that in thus educating his child he is but ^^Afd- 
low labourer with God" — ^he is not alone in his love or 
labours, for the Father is with him ! Christian parents, 
in all their teaching and training to bring their children 
to God, and to induce them to choose Him as their 
portion, may thus truly say with Paul: "We are ambas- 
sadors for Christ, as thoitgh CM did beseech you by us : 
we pray you in Chrisfs stead, be ye reconciled to God" 
— " as workers together with Him, we beseech you not to 
receive the grace of Chd in vam /" — ^and, oh I that child- 
ren, just as they awaken and respond in riper years to 
that deep and true love in father or mother, which 
rested on them before they knew it, would also open 
their hearts to that deeper and truer love of their God, 
which has never ceased to shine upon them since they 
were bom, and was solemnly testified to in their 
baptism! Nor need they, when the divine life is 
quickened in them, be baptized again! For what 



L 



UOMB BDUOATION. 81 

trnth or blessing can God signify or seal to them which 
He has not already done ? or what can God be to them 
which He has not already declared himself to be t He 
is their Father — only let them know this so as to love 
and live as His children I 

When this beautiful and solemn rite of baptism is 
thus understood, what are we to think of those parents 
who ask and obtain it for their children, yet themselves 
either believe not in the name of God, Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, or, by their practical impiety, shew that 
they have disowned that Name in which they were 
themselves baplized? Can such mockery bring a 
blessing to themselves or children ? What are we to 
think too of those parents who, while they are professed 
believers, and " seem to be religious," and have " a 
form of godliness," yet are ashamed even to confess 
God before their children, or to impart to them &om 
their own lips any teaching regarding that great Name 
by which they are called t What would that parent 
deserve who concealed from a starving son the offer 
made to him in infancy, and to be communicated in 
riper years by the parent, of a property which should 
be his on terms easily complied with? But what 
would such neglect be when compared to the guilt in- 
curred by the parent who conceals from his own child 
the knowledge of the glorious inheritance offered to 
him by his God ! Yet is it not the case, that in many 
a &juily, this Name of God, and all the blessings 
offered by Him, are never breathed by the parent to his 
children, as if they were some awful secrets which he 



32 BOMB m>nOATIOK. 

was pledged to conceal! Would, jQot manj baptized 
children be able, at judgment, to testify against their 
parents, and say with truth, " They never told us of 
God our Father, of Jesus our Saviour, or of the Spirit 
our Sanctifier ! We never heard from their lips a word 
to warn us of our danger as sinners, or to iofiDrm us of 
the mercies offered to us, and to be obtained by us as 
well as by others, through a Saviour I Never, never 
did they tell us either that we had been baptized, or 
what God had revealed to us in the ordinance !" 

Parents ! this must not, dare not be ! While thus 
acting towards your children, the very ordinance of 
baptism which you ask for them, as a matter of form, 
or senseless superstition, condemns yourselves. It 
witnesses of a Name, written on your own foreheads, 
which you have denied ; of a God long revealed, but 
yet unknown to you from wilful ignorance ; and of 
mercies long offered to yourselves, but never yet re- 
ceived from stubborn unbelief I If such is your state, 
repent 1 " Return to the I^ord thy God, for thou hast 
fallen by thine iniquity." Receive, though late, the 
remission of sins, and the gift of the Spirit signified 
and sealed in baptism to yourselves ; — and then only, 
when you are right with your own Father, will you do 
right towards your own children I 



^3 



CHAPTER IV. 

A F£W WORDS ON TSAIKIKG. 
" TsAiir up A child in the way he fboald f o/* 

Trainikg is not merely teaching a child what it ought 
to do ; it is this, and a great deal more. 

There may be a right teaching which does no good ; 
because, along with it, there is a wrong training which 
does much harm. 

" Give me some of that/* said a peevish*looking boj of 

about seven or eight years of age to his mother, who was 

seated on the deck of a steamer in which I happened 

to be lately. The mother had some eatables in her 

hand. ^^Hold your tongue, Peter," replied the mother; 

<^ you won't get it." ^' I want t^" again demanded 

Peter, with increased earnestness. ^^ I tell you," said 

the mother, looking at him, '^ you shall not get it. Is 

that not enough for you? Gro and play yourself, and 

be a good boy." " But I want thatj'' reiterated Peter, 

banning to sulk and look displeased. '^What a 

laddie!" exclaimed the mother. ^'Have I not told 

you twenty times never to ask a thing when / say 

that you are not to get itt" '^I want that/' cried 

Peter, more violently than ever, bursting into tears. 

<<HereI" said the mother, "take it, and be quiet. 

C 



84 HOME EDUCATION. 

I am sure I never, in all my life, saw such a bad 

boy r 

Alas! poor boy, he had more reason, if he only 
knew it, to complain of his mother. 

This same boy, Peter, grows up, probably to be a 
selfish and self-willed young man. His mother sees 
it, and suffers from it ; but she wonders how such a 
temper or disposition should shew themselves in her 
Peter! and consoles herself with the thought, that 
whatever is the cause of so mysterious a dispenfiation, 
from no fault in her could it have come, nor " from 
tvant of telling" That day in the steamer, for instance, 
Peter was probably taught many more lessons even 
than I heard; — such as, not to be selfish, or to, ask 
things which, on a mother's word, he was assured 
would not be given. But while thus taught a nwnber 
of duties, to what was he trained f To what, but to 
have no faith in a mother's word; or any regard to 
her wishes and commands ; to hold out with dogged 
obstinacy, sure, that in the long run, he would have 
his own w'ay ; and, when all else failed, to be sulky and 
cry, and his mother would certainty reward him by 
giving him all he ftsked for? Do you not perceive 
that there is some difference between teaching and 
training'f The one is Instruction, but the other is 
Educatibn. 

In another chapter I shall say something about how 
children should be trained. I only wish you, at pre- 
sent, to understand what training implies. Its object is 
to help the young to fornLgood liab^ — not only to 



HO^IS EDUCATION. 35 

teach them ^diat it is ri^t to be or to do, but also to 
train them to be right, and do right, according to the 
teaefaing given them* 

The training of the mind may be illustrated by 
the training of the body* You j^iwe heard of men 
being ^ framed ** to perform some feat demanding 
^reat muscular strength and exertion, such as walking 
or nmning a certain number of miles^^within a certain 
given time. Such persons put themselves under what 
is termed ^'a course of training/' in which the trainer^ 
who prepares them for tibeir intended display, does 
not content himself with ^' telling *' them what to do, 
• or^serely prescribing rules to them ; but he osubjects 
tl^m'to a hard discipline day by day ; ^and only after 
a long and severe course of self-denial, are they at last 
fitted to pesform the task they have undertaken. The 
-apostle Paul selects the ntnnersin the famous races at 
Oarinih, who aougkt to gain a corruptible crown of 
gpeen leaves, as illustrations of the earnest strivij^g 
which should characterize Christians who are called 
to run the race ^set before 'them, for "a crown which 
fadeth not away." The tratmin^, therefore, to which 
.tiiese Greeks were obliged to submit may also, in 
some respects^ illustrate the less severe, indeed, but not 
less real, discipline which is required of the Christian 
youth. The apostle says of those preparing for .the 
Corinthian race, that they were obliged to be " temper- 
«te in all things ;" to quote the language of an able 
writer upon this point,—" They exerted an habitual 
self-command — they kept in check every desire— they 



36 HOICB EDI^CATIO^. 

denied themselves every indulgence — ^they abstaSned 
from every employment — they rejected every luxury, 
which might tend to enervate their vigour, or cl(^ 
their agility, or tame their courage ; they observed a 
stated regimen— they trained themselves by laborious 
exercise — they used a thousand painful and distasteful 
arts to brace their nerves, sharpen their perceptions, 
and mature th^ir skill ; they kept their bodies under, 
and brought them into subjection ; they parted with 
their freedom for a time, and resigned themselves as 
slaves to the direction and control of some master of 
athletic arts, under whose iron discipline they had 
many things to do, and many things to endure, — ^to 
become patient of cold, and heat, and hunger, and 
thirst, and watching, and painMness, and weariness,^ 
and all bat intolerable hardships. To a training^ thus 
toilsome and intensej t^ children of the noblest commons- 
wealths of Greece^ the Mnga amd princes of her hundred 
colonies, were wont to stdmUt themselves without rqamingj 
with all the activeness and alacrity of a voluntary 
choice." Yet aU this was but the prelude, and the pre- 
paration for the race which was to gain a ^' corruptible) 
crown ! " Far be it from me to affirm, that Christian 
habits may not be formed without such an iron rule 
as this being imposed upon the child; or that the 
sunny Christian home must be converted into a hard 
• and inexorable "house of correction!" But, never- 
theless, every one who is, in truth, a disc^le of Christ 
must be disciplined for His service, and such habUs 
formed as require self-denial. 



HOME EDUCATION, 37 

I have said that trammg has especial reference to the 
formation of HabUs, 

Now we all know what is meant by a habit. It is 
well described as being a second nature. It is called 
a nature, because the thing done is easily done, and 
comes as it were naturally to us ; and it is a second 
nature, because the habit is not born with us, but ac- 
quired. The law of habit, as it is termed, is this, that 
what we do frequently, and with a good wiU, we learn 
to do easily. Every person is, more or lesi^ "a 
bundle of habits." Most of those have been acquired 
so imperceptibly, or possessed for so many years, that 
they seem to belong to our first and not our second 
nature. Thus walking, speaking or reading a lan- 
guage, are obviously mere habits. We learned them ; 
and, if we think they cost no trouble or efibrt, just 
let us watch children, and see what time they take, 
what dif&culties they overcome, and what trouble it 
gives them before they learn to walk steadily, think in- 
telligibly, or read tolerably. Every mechanic who 
learns a trade, has but acquired a habit of doing easily 
and well what, without repeated efforts for months and 
years, he could not do at all. The musician, who plays 
with ease and grace, filling our ears and soul with sweet- 
est sounds and harmonies, while executing some difii- 
cult and intricate piece of music, is a remarkable and 
common instance of the power of habit. Innumerable 
illustrations will occur to yourselves, of this singular 
capacity in man to learn to do what would otherwise be 
impossible. It is more difficult to say what cannot, than 
what can, be acquired by this singular power with 



38 HOME EDtrCATIOK. 

which God has endowed us. It is trne, that in Christian 
education we have to do more with mental and moral 
habits than mechanical ones, — such as habits of obe- 
dience, self-denial, perseverance, patience, and the 
like. But the same law applies equally to them; for the 
oftener we do what is right, with a good will ta it, the 
easier the being and doing right become, and a second 
nature supersedes the first The great object, there- 
fore, of parental training is, as I have already remarked, 
to help the child, by the right use of all the powers 
and assistances God has given the parent, to acquire 
those good habits or wen/a which he will keep through 
life, and not depart from when he is old. 

"The boy is father of the man." Youth is the 
spring in which the seed sown determines the harvest 
of a later season. It is then that the young twig takes 
the twist which the old bough retains. Every one 
knows in his own experience, and to his joy or sorrow, 
how true it is — ^that youth, as well as " life," is em- 
phatically 

*• The season God hath ffiven 
To flj from bell, and risQ to heavan/* 

It has been said with much truth by a well-known 
author : — 

** Character growetb day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding ; 
And the bent unto good or evil may be given in the hours of infancy. 
Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly tvrist it in the soil. 
The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come i 
Even so may'st thou guide the mind to good, or lead it to the marrings 

of evil. 
For disposition is builded up by the fashioning of first impressions- 
Wherefore, tho' the voice of instraction waiteth for the ear of reason. 
Yet with his mother's milk the young child drinketh Education.** 



HOMB EDUCATION. 39 

I do. not dwell, however, iijpon this fact now, as it 
will £all to be consid^ed in a subsequent chapter. 

Nor shall I at present, for the same reason, remind 
my readers, except very briefly, of more than one con- 
dition which requires, to be fulfilled in order that habits 
may be formed ; — ^and that is, a willing mind, .a real 
hearty liking on the part of the child, or a taking to that 
good which the parent wishes should grow into a habit. 
Without this no moral habits can be formed. It is 
perfectly possible, perhaps, by mere outward authority 
or force, to insure the doing of certain acts again and 
again by the outward man, but never shall the inner 
man be thus made to love the right as well as do it. 
The power of doing a thing, and the love of doing it, 
are very different. The arts, for instance, of reading, 
writing, &c., may be taught firom fear or compulsion* 
and be acquired with or without pleasure by the 
learner ; and in spite of the will, can be retained and 
practised in after years. But all this will not insure 
such habits^ as would necessarily lead the child ever to 
put pen to paper, or read a volume through. The 
reason is that no habit of mind can ever be formed by 
a rational being, however frequently acts are repeated, 
unless these are voluntary. The love of good can alone 
displace the love of evil. This leads to a practical con- 
clusion which must never be lost sight of in Home 
Education, viz., that the happiness or cheerful obedi- 
ence of the child is essential to secure the formation 
of good habits. Without this, it may he forced up, but 
never trained up, in the way in which it should go. 



40 HOME BDDCAHOK. 

There is one other point on which I may also hazard 
an opinion, and that is, the period of life in the child 
when parents should apply themselves with earnest- 
ness to this work of training. 

Now, without presuming to decide so delicate a point, 
it is necessary for me to say, that I intend my few 
hints on Home Education to apply to the training up 
of the young after infancy, and from childhood till 
youth, or from about their fifth year tiU they reach 
twelve or fifteen. The ten years after early childhood 
I would specially characterize as the habit season of life. 

I have no advice whatever to offer parents as to 
home education during infancy beyond this, — to inter- 
fere with their children as little as possible. There are 
(^w things in this world more wonderftil to a thought- 
ful mind, or more delightful to a benevolent heart, 
than the joy of children. One of our greatest poets 
says, with much truth : — 

** In clouds of glory do w6 oome 
From God who is our home ; 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.** ^ 

We need not do any thing to make the child happy. 
It is naturally happy in itself. From the joy which 
God sheds within its soul like sunlight, joy shines 
upon everything without, and is reflected back froin all. 
No poet ever had a more brilliant fancy, no philoso- 
pher busier thoughts ! It can create to itself an ocean 
from a cup of water, a ship from a bit of straw, and 
summon out of bits of paper, or out of nothing, men 
and women, kings and queens, to obey its commands 



BOME EDUCATION. 41 

and contribute to its amusements. It is planning, 
contriving, and enjoying all day long. With all this 
God has placed it in His own school of providence, 
and in ten thousand ways, too many to number, and 
too deep to understand, He is educating this babe, 
and teaching it lessons innumerable. He is doing so 
chiefly through what you yourselves are; and by the 
constant influence which is unconsciously exercised in 
the household by your own personal character. No 
doubt, a very wise and judicious parent can, from its 
earliest dawn, by more direct efforts, help to mould 
the child gently and lovingly into many good habits, 
such as patience, obedience, kindness, &c. But this 
requires such tact and fine handling that few are fit 
for it. As a rule, I believe more harm will be done 
than good by attempting to apply any formal system of 
pruning and training to so tender a plant ; beyond 
what is prompted by good common sense, guided by 
parental and Christian afiection. 

If you musty in short, give it something, confine your 
generosity to wholesome plain food from your hand, 
love in abundance from your heart, with as much light, 
liberty, and air, as every day beneath God's sky can 
afford ; and it will educate itself better than you can 
do. Let these conditions be fulfilled as far as possible, 
even in one of our vile and horrid streets or lanes, 
and the child will thrive better in soul and body, than 
when confined like a hot-house plant in a splendid 
mansion, pampered with luxuries, or teased and fretted 
all day long by some injudicious parent or teacher, who 



42 HOMB EDUCATION. 

insists on training or teasing it up to become won- 
derfully clever or wonderfully well-behaved. Watch, 
control, lead, mould your children from in&Jicy if you 
will, but, oh ! let them be free and joyous ! ** Check 
not a child in his merriment; should not hia morn- 
ing be sunny ? " Let. them skip like the lambs on the 
hill-side, and. sing aJl d,ay long like the larks overhead 
in the sky I Let them be happy ; and, the light of their 
morning will make their day more bright and leave 
some golden touches on the clouds, that m^,y gather 
round them at evening ! 

And here I cannot but express my sympathy with 
those Christian parents who are conapelled to live 
in the miserable tenements which crowd our large 
cities. It is not possible to conceive, in a civilized 
or Christian land, worse circumstances for the right 
upbringing of the young than those in which ijiijua- 
bers of our respectable artizans are placed. The 
house is small and confined, because property is 
valuable and rents are exorbitant, lliere is Httie 
light a^d little air, order is hardly possible, cleanliness 
difficult, taste out of the question. A)l that sheets the 
eye without is still more uncongenial. The common 
stair is coated with the mud of the crowded inhs^^i^ 
ants of the various flats to which it leads. The street 
or lane is wet or dusty, and always filthy. The lark 
in the cage has some grass beneath his feet ; but the 
children have none for theirs. The air is loaded with 
smoke and smells of every description, from what is 
contributed by the kennel below up to the tall chimney 



HOM£ EDUCATION. 43 

which vomits its vapours and black stream above. 
The blue sky is seldom seen in the narrow interval 
of roofs overhead or through the canopy of smoke. 
Is this a home in which to enjoy life and rear a family ! 
Yet even this home is, in most cases^ uncertain, ^o 
attachment can be formed to its walls, such as even a 
prisoner forms, after years of confinement, to his cell. 
No attachment can be formed to its neighbourhood of 
its neighbours, for these are ever changing. The 
workman must foUow his w(».k, and if that fails in one 
place he must seek it in another. And thus, as the 
Arab who has to move his tent when the pasture is con- 
sumed, requires to have such a tent as is easily and 
rapidly moved ; so, many of our workmen having to 
hire their house from month to month, never burthen 
themselves b«t with the scantiest supply of furniture ; 
and wander hither and thither, from street to street, from 
city to city, having no feeling of rest or home anywhere, 
being strangers everywhere. Schools, churche3, neigh- 
bours, employers, never two years the same ! Why do I 
mention such things here ? To awaken sympathy^with 
the difficulties which many of our working classes have 
to contend against ; to make those who take an interest 
in them see what an important bearing steady work, and 
a fixed and comfortable home, have upon the education 
and character of our population ; to turn the attention 
of every reader to the consideration of whatever feas- 
ible plan is proposed for combining the freedom and 
independence of the country with the social advantages 
of the town to the workman ; to make intelligent arti- 



44 HOME EDUCATIOK. 

zans careful what home they select, in which to rear 
their precious ofispring to good and to happiness ; to im- 
plore every man to whom God has given the unspeak- 
able blessing of a home among the green fields, and the 
sunny skies, and cheerful scenes of our beautiful coun- 
try, to beware how he lightly gives it up and ex- 
changes it for a iilthy village, or a den in some dark 
comer of our crowded cities ; and, finally, to remind 
landlords, in town and country; that God has laid few 
more solemn responsibilities upon a man, than the 
power of assigning a home for the upbringing of im- 
mortal souls, and that they must take care how a spot 
so sacred is made suitable for such inmates. At aU 
events, if ever our home education is to be improved 
among the masses, we must also improve the homes in 
which it is to be afforded ; while all parents would do 
well to remember how much, in every case, home 
education depends on the health and happiness of the 
children, and how these again are so much connected 
with a well-aired, clean, and cheerfiilly situated home ! 
Thus sings Allan Cunningham on the town and 
country child : — 



*' Child of the country ! on the lawn 
I tee thee like the hounding fawn, 
Blithe as the hird which tries its wing 
The first time on the winds of spring ; 
Bright as the sun. when from the cloud 
Be comes as cocks are crowing loud ; 
Now running, shouting, *mid sunbeams, 
Now groping trouts in lucid streams, - 
Now spinning like a mill-wheel round, 
Now hunting echoes empty sound, 



HOME SDUCATIOK. 45 

Mow climbing up tooM old taU tree*- 
For eliroUng sake. 'Tie tweet to thee 
To sit where bird* caa sit alone. 
Or abare with thee thy Tentarona throne.** 

** Child of the town and bnstling street. 
What wilea and anarea await thy feet ! 
Thy patba are paved for fiye long milea. 
Thy groYoa and hilla are peaka and tUea ; 
Thy fragrant air fa yon thick amoke, 
Which ahronda thee like a mourning cloak ; 
And thoQ art oabin'd and confined. 
At once from ann, and dew, and wind ; 
Or aet thy tottering feet but on 
Thy lengthened walka of alippery stone; 
The coachman there careering reela 
With goaded ateeds and maddening wheels ; 
And commerce poura each poring aon 
In peira puraidt and hollaa* run : - 
The atream'a too atrong for thy fraU bark, 
There nought can aail, aaye what ia atark. 
Fly from the town, aweet child I for health 
Is happineas, and atrength, and wealth I " 



But thus " to fly firom the town** is impossible for 
thousands of our children. Towns must exist, and if 
so, there also may Christian families be reared. But 
must towns exist as they are f Can nothing more be 
dooe to make them fitter habitations and fitter schools 
for health, happiness, and Christian nurture I Cannot 
the transitory and material be made to serve the eter- 
nal and spiritual, instead of working so sadly out of 
harmony with it? Could not more be done in this 
direction for the cause of Home Education and Home 
Missions than has ever yet been attempted or even 
thought of by our landlords, tenants, or police magis- 
trates ? * And surely to build houses of comfort, and 



46 HOMX EDUCATION, 

even of beautj for those who deserve and could appre- 
ciate them, and to do so, not from the mere love of 
money, but firom the love of men, would be a wise and 
worthy outgoing of Christian philanthropy. It is 
sometimes made a subject pf complaint by certain par- 
ties against '* cold Protestantism," but especially **fidgid 
Presbyterianism," that they build churches so inferior 
in grandeur and ornament to those erected by the splen- 
did gifts of our Popish " pious ancestors." But why 
should we not expend as a free gift on our Christian 
dwellings what we save from Christian temples ? 
This would be, afl«r all, in harmony with the genius 
of Protestantism. Romanism is chiefly the religion 
of the church, Protestantism of the family. The one 
erects a place of worship with many priests, for a 
whole city; the other aims at making every home 
a temple, every fireside an altar, and every head of a 
family a priest. If Papists, therefore, consecrate so 
much of their wealth merely to rear beautiful churches, 
why may not Protestants as generousty rear beautiful 
homes, and 'expend upon the many private houses of 
prayer, and home schools of Christian education, what 
they deem as superfluous, when applied to rare and 
costly ornament on the public sanctuary? 'Goodly 
churches, erected by the rich for the poor, are a lovely 
spectacle in a* Christian land, and monuments of that 
self-sacrifice in the builders, which is the grand lesson 
taught within their walls to the worshippers. But 
would not goodly houses, erected by the rich in love for 
the well-being of industrious Christian men,*be spec- 



HOUE EIM7CATIOK. 47 

tacles still more beautiful, and indicate a spirit of self- 
sacrifice as wise and as beneficent? 

In the meantime, let each man, according to his 
ability, set his own house in order, and labour to adorn 
it with at least the beauty of cleanliness 1 To be clean 
is a part of God's will revealed in providence, and like 
every other law is attended by rewards and punish- 
ments. Cleanliness forms no small ingredient in the 
beauty of creation. Plants and animals wash or are 
washed. Nature betrays no filth. She is ever robed 
in spodess garments. Man is the only uncle£i animal ' 
in existen<ie. He wages constant war against his best 
frietids, fresh air and fresh water ; and that is a war in . 
which, every year, more are slain than ever fell during 
the same period by shot or shell ! Oh 1 if working 
men could reckon the money which it costs to breathe 
impure air, and to live at enmity with soap and water! 
If they only knew the wealth and happiness which the 
family sacrifice for a bad drain or an ill-ventilated 
room ; and the enormous rent which is paid for a 
dark and unwholesome dwelling, they would unite them- 
selves into one great House Beform Association ; or at 
least use all the means which God has already given 
them to secure for themselves one of the gr&Atest earthly 
blessings, — a warm, yet clean, well-lighted, well-aired, 
and cheerful home, in which to rear their young ones ! 
The sparrow findeth out such a nest for herself ; are 
ye not of more value than maiiy sparrows ? 

Header — pardon this digreasifon, if indeed it is one. 



48 



CHAPTER V. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN RIGHT FBEIJNGS TOWARDS 

GOD. 

*' Remember thy Creator in the days cfthy yotrtft." 

As undcDt-lying all Christian education, and as essential 
to the formation of all right habits, parents ought to 
cultivate in their children's hearts right feelings towards 
God. 

All true ideas of God are involved in the knowledge 
of the Name into which we have been baptized. 

To know God is to know Him sA Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, and as our God. 

But I do not, at present, allude to those doctrinal 
lessons regarding the being and character of Grod im- 
parted by Christian instruction, but rather to those 
apprehensions regarding Him which belong to the 
Christian education of an earlier period of life, when 
the child is taught chiefly through the feelings and 
affections* 

If the sum and substance of religion is to '^ hve the 
Lord our God with heart, and soul, and strength," this 
affection should be directed towards God from the 
earliest years in which it is possible to possess it. 

A child's heart may reach heaven, and dwell there, 



HOME EDUCATIOK. 49 

very long before the reasonings of its understanding 
can rise above the clouds of earth. From its father 
here it can ascend to its Father there ; and love both, 
when it cannot tell why. ' 

" When I was a child," says St. Paul, " I spake a5 
a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child ; 
but when I became a man I put away childish things." 
But he also had loved as a child ; and, as a man, he 
would not put away, but retain and cherish that 
beautiful feature of childhood, in its simplicity, purity, 
and devotion. 

" Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth !" 
Let not thoughts of Him be deferred till maturer years 
come. Let Him not be the light of thy winter only, 
but also the life and beauty of thy spring ! 

1. The young should be trained to " Remember 
their Creator" as their FcOher ; as one who knows 
them individually, and loves them. Oh I never let the 
impression be given that He is some dread being, pos- 
sessing irresistible power; with a severe and angry 
look, always watching people— especially children who 
are not supposed to be so good as their seniors — in 
order only to detect their faults, and to punish them 
to the utmost capacity of endurance, here or hereafter ; 
a being for whom they ought to be frightened, or for 
whom they cannot help being frightened, whether they 
ought to be so or not ! It seems to me that the devil 
could not select better teachers for his scholars, than 
nurses or parents who habitually impress such an image 
of God as this on the young and tender heart I ^^ The 



50 HOME l&DIKIAXIOK. 

fear of the Lord'* is indeed '< the begLaning of wisdom^ 
— ^but not ieiTTOT for the Lord, which is the beginning 
of wickedness and loiiserj ; for such '^ fear hath tor- 
ment." " He who loveth not, knoweth not God ; for 
God is loTC ;*' and " there is no fear in love." 

Let me not be misunderstood* I belieye that God hates 
and punishes sin both here and hereafter ; that there is a 
hell now, and a worse coming for the wicked. Nor do 
I mean to afi&rm that God's counsel in this, as in every 
other matter pertaining to oux Mth or duty, should not 
be taught at fitting seasons to the young ;. but not tAu 
counsel chiefly, Deut less separated from the &ust of His 
love ; for surely this is not what is characteristic of God ! 
His '^ Name," or that by which He reveals himself, is 
not " Punisher," but " Father." It is not " vengeance," 
but "love." " He doth not willingly afflict the child- 
ren of men." " God sent not His Son to condemn the 
world, but that the world through Him might be saved." 
It is equally true that the most holy and loving father 
on earth will hate evil in his child, and will punish it 
too, and that just because he is holy and loving, and 
not selfish, unrighteous, and indifferent. But would 
any parent, therefore, wish his child to think of him as 
one who lived only to punish him ? or would he wish 
himself to be an object of terror and alarm to his 
family? Let a parent remember this as he says to 
those around his fireside: "Come, children, listen unto 
me, and I will teach you ihefear of the Lord!'* 

Accustom your children, then, to remember their 
Creator as a Father who indeed loves them, and who 



HOKE SDCTCATION. 51 

X 

hates Milj wka* tliej. should aba hate with all their 
heaits — ^siK ; and that of all sins this is the chie^ not 
to lore God who so loves them. 

3. The young ought also hahitually to " remember" 
ihe presence of their Greater and Father, and not to 
think of Him as one fieir away in some myeterious 
distant place called heaven ; nor as one who is specially 
present on Sabbath-days, or in churches only, but as 
one who is ever with tliem, ^Maying His hand upon 
ih^D, besetting them before and behind, and seeing 
their thoughts when they are ahx off/' Such thoughts 
of God, however, can never be welcomed by young 
or old until they first know this God as their Father. 
How can we be else than terrified at the thought of 
the presence of an unseen and powerful enemy ? If 
by any means we can get quit of so terrible an appari- 
tion, we shall certainly do so as speedily as possible. 
But £aT otherwise will it be with those who know God, 
and who, not forgetting His hdLiness and power, 
associate with His name loving-kindness and tender 
mercy. 

In order thus to realize the love (^ God, and the 
blessedness of His presence, they ought to be accus- 
tomed always to think of Jesus as one with God, or as 
God. For it is not difficult to picture to the mind and 
heart, through the words of the Gospel history, the 
reality of the presence and love of Jesus as a living 
person, journeying with and teaching His disciples; 
doing good in every possible way to all who came to 
Him ; living in the house of Martha, Mary, and La- 



52 HOME KDUOATION. 

zaru8, and weeping with His fiiencU in their sorrow ; 
taking little children into His arms and blessing them ; 
and restoring to their parents those who were sick or 
even dead. The transition is not difficult firom thus 
knowing about such a person, to believing that it is this 
same God who loves us and is with us still, and who 
says to every disciple, old and young, '< Itia I^ be not 
afraid r 

It will also help to make children welcome the 
thoughts of His presence, by leading them to associate 
their daily common mercies with God in Christ. Most 
people do not forget to speak of Him, in connexion with 
sickness or death in the family, or any sudden accident 
which may occur, until the young are apt to become 
impressed with the idea, that only on such sad occasions 
does He ever enter their dwelling. Instead of this, let 
them be habituated to remember Him as the Giver of 
every good and perfect gift ; as giving us " all things 
richlif to enjoy;" as opening His hand, and liberally 
supplying the wants of every living thing. Let them 
remember that it is God who gives to themselves their 
days of sunshine and health ; their joyous sports, their 
innocent songs of glee, and loving companionships, — all, 
in short, that is good and worth having. Let them 
learn that He not only permits such happiness on earth, 
but gives it to them, and that He withholds nothing, or 
forbids anything, but what is bad, or would injure 
them ; or in order that He should, in some other 
way, do them more good, and make them better and 
happier. The very joyousness of the birds that have 



Hous sduoahon. 53 

been safelj brought through the cold and Btormy 
winter, and now sing among the branches ; and of the 
young lambs that sport themselves in the lights and 
shadows of the green pastures ; and all such proo& of 
Gk>d'8 goodness should be presented to the child's heart 
to draw it to God, even when it cannot take in those 
proo& of love through Jesus which amaze angels. 

Such training as this will be in harmony with the 
teaching of God's Spirit. It will help to fan the flame 
of love from their infancy, so that, with increasing 
years, they may be able, with increasing intelligence 
and affection, to say, "Our Father;" and, like David 
in the 139th Psalm, to sing with joy at the thoughts 
of His presence. 

3. Children ought also to be habituated to "Be- 
member" the authority of God their Creator and 
Father. Any system of education which tends to 
exclude thoughts of God as One to whom we owe 
obedience^ is an ungodly system. It is quite possible, 
and nothing more common, to accustom children to 
regulate their conduct by motives quite irrespective 
of God's being, presence, or authority, and by what 
is agreeable or pleasing to themselves; by what 
graUfies their senses, pride, vanity, ambition, love of 
ease, and self-indulgence. Now, without despising, or 
treating as valueless, innumerable inducements to en- 
courage young and old in their obedience, and to cheer 
them on their journey, yet the habii should be fostered 
of their doing what is rights just because it is right, 
irrespective of all present consequences. Let them be 



5<i BOKB EDUOATIOIT. 

accnsiomed to tbouglits of duty^ And to wbtit ought to 
be dose, come what may ; but belieiring that all must 
come well in the aid. And if they are to team this 
all4mportaiit lesBon, the best and truest method of 
toadiing it is to connect their li& with an ever-pre* 
SMit Person, God in Christ ; to lead them to remem-* 
ber Him as One who is really personally concerned, 
so to speak, with their weDdoing and happiness ; who, 
because He is their Creator and Redeemer, loveii 
them as His own dear children ; who is delighted 
with them wh«i they try sincerely to do what is 
right ; who is ready to forgive their many &nlts 
when they forsake them ; who is always with them 
to help them and strengthen them to be good ; and 
who is displeased with them only when they wilfiilly 
and obstinately continue to love and to do what they 
know He hates and has forbidden. 

Such habitual thoughts of God — of His love, pre- 
sence, and authority — 'Will produce habits of aonsden" 
tiaume88 in the yonng, a living ** before God" as One 
who knows the heart. Such a " seeing of Him who 
is invisible" will thus root out hypocrisy and eye- 
service, and produce sincerity and truth. 

4. Once more, I would suggest that children should 
be trained to remember God as the Hearer and An^erer 
of prayer^ 

This thought of Gt>d will naturally Spring out of 
those which I have been inculcating, and the child can- 
not but feel how an ever-present Father naust be a 
hearer and answerer of prayer. I have yet to 



HOBfS SDUCATIOK. 55 

addtess parents upon the subject of fkmily prajer, and 
shall not therefore here point out how intimately it is 
coimected with the cultivation of the habit of prayer 
in each child. But in whatever way it is attained, 
children, from the time in which it is possible for them 
to possess right thoughts of 6od^ however imperfect 
these may blB, dionld be habituated to speak to himself 
directly in prayer. 

" Hold the UtUe lumdg in pr«jr«r, tMch the weak knees their kAeeUcg.*' 

A form of prayer may be taught the young, with 
words and thoughts Suitable to their age. But with or 
without this, it would be well to cultivate in them the 
habit of uttering their own thoughts to God, thanking 
Him for what they have received from Him, confessing 
to JEIim the &ults for which they have been corrected, 
and asking firom Him what they wish for themselves 
and others. In all this there wiU be no doubt the 
tlioughts, reasoning, and Speech of a child ; but there 
may be also a child's faith, simplicity, and love. And 
oh, that angels may hear from them in riper years, so 
acceptable a prayer at a throne of grace t 

One other hint on th^ cultivation of right habits of 
thought regarding God, ahd it is this, — check all irre- 
verence ; — ^all words and conduct positively inconsis- 
teilt with faith in God's presence or authority, especi- 
ally ih connexion with whatever is intimately associated 
with thoughts of Him, such as any of His names, titles, 
sacraments, or Word, by which He reveals himself; 
His sanctuary where He is worshipped ; or His holy 
day, which He has set apart for Himsel£ 



56 HOME EDUGATIOir. 

A child should be early led to connect those holy^ 
things with the living God, and to treat them with 
respect and not with levity, just because they are in a 
peculiar sense sacred, and speak of the Holy One. But 
do not suppose that a child, however truly it possesses 
this reverential feeling; will ever express it in its 
outward conduct as an advanced Christian will do. 
The child will still speak and think as a child, and 
cannot, till it becomes a man, put away childish things. 
Do not then force it into an unnatural or premature 
growth of feeling and behaviour, or compel it to appear 
without, what it cannot possibly, from its years, be or 
feel within ; lest all genuine truthful feeling should be 
obliterated, and mere Cant or unreality take its place. 
In one word, train it to feel aright and to act aright, 
in reading the Bible, attending church, or keeping the 
Sabbath holy ; but oh ! do not demand in all this the 
self-control, the thought, the relish for good, . charac« 
teristic of more advanced years. As it is in the days 
of our youihy so must it be with the feelings of such 
days, that our Creator can be remembered and revered ; 
and He who remembers that we are dust ; and that 
" childhood and youth are vanity," will accept of a 
child's heart, and a child's services, though these may 
be expressed in a form which in manhood would indi- 
cate thoughtlessness, indifference, or irreverence. Only 
cherish right thoughts and feelings towards God, and 
these being the spirit, will, as they grow stronger, more 
and more express themselves according to the letter, of 
the Law. 



67 



CHAPTER VI. 

HABITS. 

SIGHT FEELINGS TOWARD PARENTS — OBEDIENCE — SELF- 
SACRIFICE — INDUSTRY — PERSEVERANCE TRUTH 

HONESTY. MRS. WESLEY's TRAINING OF HER FAMILY. 

'* Eren a child it known by his doings. ** 

If right feelings towards God lie at the foundation of 
all good hahits, and must accompany their growth, so 
also do right feelings towards parents. Indeed, as we 
have already tried to explain in a former chapter, by 
the earthly parent must the child's heart first ascend 
to the heavenly. 

I do not, however, mean in this place to do more 
than briefly allude to those feelings which should be 
fostered in children towards their parents. They are 
summed up in one word — love ; which is confidence in 
them, companionship with them, obedience to them. 
The result of all will be a good and happy home. 
Without this love, there cannot be Christian educa- 
tion. How the child's heart can best be gained, or any 
other good habit cultivated, is yet to be considered ; 
what I wish to remind parents of now, and before spe- 
dfying other habits to which their children should be 



58 



HOME EDrCATIOK. 



trained, is the absolute necessity of their inspiring snch 
perfect and hearty confidence in their fiimily, .as shall 
expand under God's blessing, to that trust in himself, 
which is the essence of true religion. Be assured that 
the life of education is perfect confidence in him who 
educates. To teach the head, a head alone is needed ; 
but to educate the spirit and heart, spirit and heart to 
do so are essential. With perfect childlike confidence 
in your affections and character, education of the child- 
like affections and character will be comparatively 
easy. Without this, it will, on your part at least, be 
impossible. Your daguerreotype likeness cannot be 
produced in your child's soul, however oflen he gazes 
into your countenance, unless you shine in the light 
and life of love ! 

Tour children must love you; and you must 
allow their love to express itself in any way which 
their heart prompts. Never repel, never chill them. 
Let them feel that there are on earth bosoms where 
every sorrow may be poured out, every error con- 
fessed, and every trifle which interests them told. 
Carefully encourage in your children this transparent 
confiding frankness, which is the best evidence and 
best guardian of genuine affection. "Let them feel that 
you love them, and that in every thing which coticems 
them they may trust you implicitly at all times, as 
those who can never fail them, never deceive them, 
never act but as their truest, i^isest, and most loving 
friends. Such simple faith and love will suffice for a 
thousand rules of action, and bedome eyes i][uick io dis- 



HOME EDUOATfOir. 59 

cem the good and bad, hands prompt to act, feet swift 
to run, and ears that will hear musio in command, and 
melting notes of sorrow in rebuke t 

With these general remarks, let me now mention a 
few other habits in detail. I may state that I do not 
arrange these in any order indicatory of their relative 
importance, nor do I attempt to enumerate all which 
it is desirable to foster, but those only which seem to 
me to be most essential to the fonnation of a manly 
Christian character. 

The first I notice ii 



OBBDIKNCE. 

Obedience in its lowest form is submission to mere 
authority, because it has a right to command ; in its 
highest and truest it is submission to authority, because 
it commands what is right. Disobedience in either 
ease is that essential evil in us, which consists in set* 
ting up our own will as the supreme will, and self- 
worship in the place of Grod. " My own way !" and not 
the way which we should go, is the motto upon man's 
treason banner. <<Let me alone — ^give me my own 
way" is the child's first petition to its parents, though 
only expressed by tears and fretfiilness, when its self- 
will is thwarted. "My own Way I ** cries the rebel- 
lious young man, as in the pride of fancied independ- 
ence, he spttms the control of all authority, and de- 
spises the laws of God and man. "My own way I" 
is the last prayer which rises from the heart of the 
hoary "headed sinner, as he totters on the brink of eter-^ 



60 HOMB EDUCATION. 

nity, to the very last the slave of his own lawlees 
desires, and rebellious will. 

Self-will in childhood is the leprous spot, which, 
unless cured by the reception of " the Spirit of life, 
which is in Christ Jesus," will surely spread itself over, 
and consume the whole body. It is the spark which, 
unless extinguished by the fire of Divine love, will 
kindle itself to ^' everlasting burning.'' It is the birth 
of a demon, who, unless destroyed by the birth of a 
new man in Christ Jesus, will live for ever an enemy 
to the living God. Self-will is enmity to God. It 
desires to reign without Him, and would, if it could, 
hurl Him from His throne of supreme authority. It 
is hell begun ! 

Parents I do not think lightly of, or trifle with, such 
evil as this. Earnestly contend against it. Fray God 
to master it. Let alT the power of love and authority 
which He has given you be put forth to accomplish its 
destruction, by establishing in its place the reign of 
principle, and the habit of yielding obedience to what 
is right. Unless this is done in early, it cannot be 
done by you in riper years. If the tiger cannot be 
tamed or overcome when young, how shall you expect 
to subdue it when it has reached its strength! Habit- 
ually check, control, this wilful rebelliousness; and 
mould the infant mind into obedient submission. Let 
the child be accustomed always to yield its will to 
yours — at first, if necessaiy, simply because it is your 
will, — until it is able to see its righteousness. Thus 
will you train them up to obey God, so that, in after 



HpHB EDUCATION. 61 

life, they may be able to say, ^< We have bad fathers o£ 
oar flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reyer- 
ence, shall we not mucb rather be in subjection to the 
Father of our spirits, and live ?'* 

It is remarkable, the connexion traced everywhere 
in the Bible between obedience to parents and obe« 
dience to God. In point of time, the heavenly is 
rooted in the earthly. The first curse after the flood 
was occasioned by irreverence to a parent. When 
Grod promised to bless all nations through Abraham, 
which was the bringing all nations into obedience 
with himself, He connected this with the fact of 
obedience to parents, " all nations shall be blessed 
in him, (Abraham,) for I know that he iviU com" 
mand his children^" &c. ^^ Children," says Paul, 
*^obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 
Honour thy father and mother ; which is the first com" 
mandment with promise ; that it may be well with thee, 
and that thou mayest live long on the earth." It is 
^' the first commandment" of the second table of the 
law; thus forming a link, as it were, between our 
duties to God and man, or the two great commandments 
to love God and our neighbours as ourselves. Our 
blessed Lord magnified this law of obedience, and made 
it honourable, by having been " subject to His parents." 
This was the feature in childhood of His life, whose 
meat and drink it ever was to do the will of His Father 
in heaven, and those things always which pleased Him. 
It is good for parents to be reminded of God's judg- 
ments pronounced upon rebellious children, as recorded 



62 BOMB BDI^CATIOir. 

again and again in tha Old TeitamcD*. How aolemn 
are tbosel 

<< He that smiteth his jbther or his meth^ abali be 
surely put to death.*' 

^^ He that curseth bis father or his mother shall 
surely be put to death." 

^ K a man have a stuhbom and rebelMous son, 
which will not obey the voice of his fatlier, or the 
voice of his mother, and that, when they have chas- 
tened him, will not hearken unto them ; then shall his 
lather and his mother lay hold upon him, and bring 
him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate 
of his place : and they shall say unto the elders of his 
city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will 
not obey our voice ; he is a glutton and a drunkard. 
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones 
that he die. So shalt thou put evil away fix)m among 
you." 

Though God does not punish this evil now as 
he did then — ^a far worse punishment being in reserve 
— ^the evil is still the same in His sight See, then, 
that it M evil— very evil itself — and beware, lest, 
"by your own disobedience to God's will, you bring 
upon yourselves such heavy punishments as He sefnt 
£11, who, though God's High Priest, and, in the 
main, a religious man, nevertheless, through easi- 
ness of temper, permitted his children to have their 
own way; and while He trembled for the Ark of 
God, trembled not for the sins of his owd household. 
« I have told him," said the Lord, « I will judge his 



HOKB SDUCAXION. 68 

house for eyer^ for the iniquity which Ae hiowithj be* 
cause his sons made themselves yile^ cmd he restramed 

SELF-SACBIFICE. 

Obedience might be included under this head, inas- 
much as it is the sacrifice of our own will to a higher 
will; but I prefer to treat it separately* By self- 
sacrifice, I here chiefiy mean, the habit of giving up 
self for the good and happiness of others, and as 
opposed to that absorbing selfishness, which would 
sacrifice to self the good and happiness of all. How 
early in life does this unjust, and unloTing spirit mani- 
fest itself! How soon do children whom it governs, 
become greedy, grasping, and the little tyrants of 
parents, brothers, sisters, and servants! Everybody 
and everything must minister to their amusement 
and pleasure; while they themselves, in their love 
of ease and slothful indulgence, '^ will not," as the 
phrase is, '^put themselves about" to please others ; 
— " they cannot be troubled ;" " they have some- 
thing of their own to attend to," &c. '^ What else 
can you expect firom the child ?" cries the indulgent 
parent, who feeds this selfishness by a compliance 
with every wish. But the child, as he becomes 
older, becomes the very pest of the household, and the 
petty tyrant of the play-ground. What say the parents 
now? *'0h! you cannot put old heads on young 
shoulders !" But childhood ripens to youth — the old 
evil exists, and shews itself in a thousand forms. The 



64 HOME SDUCATIOK. 

shoulders, which have not carried the yoke of self- 
sacrifice in youth, dislike the cross of Christ in advanced 
age. And now the complaint is heard from father and 
mother, whose own happiness has probably been sacri- 
ficed by their children : — " They are gone from our 
control altogether ; and, indeed, for some years our 
words have been as idle tales. They have given us 
great pain and annoyance. But the young people 
would have their own way; and what can we do 
now?" Now J indeed, very little 1 but what might you 
not have done, but for your own selfishness I 

Parents, remember that this habit of self-sacrifice 
is the soul of all that is good and great, — of all that 
is loveable and heroic It is the spirit of Christ- 
ianity ; for it is the spirit of Christ. Let your child- 
ren, therefore, be trained up to consider the feelings, 
the happiness, the good, the rights of others. Let 
them be taught to regard selfishness in every form 
as unworthy and sinful, and self-sacrifice in every 
form as beautiful and good, because it is love. Let 
them be trained to think of others, and to share 
what they have with others; and to know that 
such sacrifice is the only real gain; that to give 
all we can to others, is to possess the richest in- 
heritance ourselves ; that to love ourselves, we must 
truly love others ; and that the more w& (xre all this, 
the more shall we resemble the God of Love, who 
" spared not His own Son," but gave Him a sacri- 
fice for sinners, in order to make them partakers of 
His own character and joy ; and be like that Saviour 



HOME EDUCATION. 65 

who <^ pleased not himself,'' hut gave His own life for 
us, and who possessed, in perfection, the ^* love which 
seeketh not her own." And let me add, that this self- 
sacrificing spirit has hourly opportunities, hoth of prov- 
ing and improving itself, in the innumerahle acts and 
varied scenes of household life. There is no better 
school on earth in which to form the habit than that 
of home ; in the nursery among brothers and sisters ; 
in the playground among companions ; or in the house 
among servants and dependents. Thus at the fireside, 
and in the so-called triJUs which fill up daily life, may 
be cultivated the spirit which is the very light and joy 
of earth and heaven ! 

It may not be out of place to remind parents how this 
great law of love — ^which is the opposite of the law 
of self— ought to embrace even the lower animals. 
These creatures belong to Grod. We dare not use 
them, except consistently with the will of their Maker 
and possessor ; they have their righta as well as we, 
and they are secured to them by the same charter — 
Grod's will. He who '' takes care of oxen," and who 
commanded that they should not be muzzled when 
treading out the com, — He who designed the Sabbath 
as a day of rest for the labouring brute, as well as for 
the labouring man, — ^He who, in sparing Nineveh, 
considered the " much cattle" which were in it, — He 
who feeds the wild beasts of the desert, and hears the 
ravens when they cry, and marks the sparrow when it 
falls; — He, the living God, desires us to have alike mind 
with himself, and to protect the weakest of His creatures 



66 HOXE BDUOATION.' 

with the arm of love, and not to sacrifice them to cra- 
elty, or heartless selfishness. Cnltiyate^ then, in your 
children^ hahits of kindness and selfHMorifice, even to 
these. The hoy or girl who is habitmallj emd to a 
fly, may end in heing hahitually cruel to a &iher, — 

** H« pra^eth best who loreth best 
AU ereatnrflB gre»i and naaU ; 
For the dear God who loveth hs» 
H*ma^ and lov«th alir 

If Buch habits of kindness are right and beantifol 
when exercised towards the dumb animals which de- 
pend upon us for their enjoyment ; how much more 
necessary are they in relation to defenceless human 
beings, such as younger children, the old, the blind, 
the fatuous, or the deformed T Yet, alas T with what 
tjrranny and cruelty are such often treated by the young 
when they happen to be in their power, and interfere 
with, or can be made to minister to their amusement. 
It is no excuse for such conduct to deny that it is 
occasioned by any innate cruelty of disposition, or to 
allege that it proceeds from thoughtlessness, or love of 
excitement The evil is this very want of thoughtful- 
ness about others, and the utter selfishness which sac- 
rifices the happiness of others to their own impulses. 
Instead of this, the young should be educated to habits* 
of positive kindness and considerateness towards the 
weak, the afflicted, and the defenceless. They should 
be imbued with a generous, chivalrous feeling towards 
such, and led to admire the love that will not 

•* Minifle our pleasure or our pride 

With sorrow of the memeat thmg that lires t ** 



HOME EDtrCATION. 67 

INDUSTRY. 

The necessity of labour is a great blessing in our 
present state* It is good for fallen man, that he should 
eat his hread in the sweat of his brow. God has an- 
nexed labour to the possession of all that is really 
worth possessing. In temporal and in spiritual things 
it holds tme^ that '* the hand of the diligent maketh 
rich." The children of the poor need not have enlbrced 
upon them aswuudi as others this necessity of labour ; 
they know that idleness will be immediately punished 
by starvation and disgrace. The rich require the 
lesso^i perhaps, more than others, for they have 
greater temptations to idleness; and with ihem, as 
with their poorer brethr^i, <^ idle days are the devirs 
busy ones ;" for most of their vices and their misery 
arise out of tiieir idleness. How many young men^ I 
may here remark, in the upper ranks of society, would 
be saved from the extravagances and follies which have 
embittered their life, had th^ been trained up only to 
some trade or profession^ or felt their responsibility to 
God for the use they made of these great talents, — 
time, money, and influence 1 What blessings might 
such capital, if improved, bring to themselves and to 
society I What unspeakable enjoyment might they 
derive from the field of duty I Instead of seeking to 
<< kill time," (which i»all the while killing them !) they 
would redeem it, and gather treasured from it for life 
eternal. Let the rich, as well as the poor, then, train 
up their children to hodnts of industry. Let them be 



68 HOME EDUCATION* 

taught to improve their time ; and not to labour merely 
to amuse themselves, but to amuse themselves in order 
to labour. 

But industry in mere labour to support life is not all 
that is required of even the common labourer. : Every 
man is bound to improve whatever talents God com- 
mits to him to the very utmost, whether he is poor or 
rich, for his own good and the good of the world. He 
dare not with impunity hide any in the earth. How 
much, for example, is lost to many of •our working 
classes by the selfishness of their parents, in having 
taken them early from school to earn wages, which 
might well be spared for some years, and "^hose 
loss, for a time, would be made up again a hundred- 
fold in the blessings conferred by a good educa- 
tion. Let those who have thus suffered save their 
children from a like £Bite. The uneducated workman 
seldom rises above a mere drudge. He cannot under- 
take work which requires more than ordinary skill and 
information nor acquire the knowledge from reading and 
thought, which would enable him to undertake it at a 
future period. For the few pence he gained by leaving 
school early he thus loses many pounds, which would 
have been his had he remained as an industrious learner. 
But'this is not all, nor the most important iteni of his 
loss. Of what enjoyment is he deprived because he 
cannot read with ease, and has never been trained to 
derive pleasure from the employment of his mental 
faculties. In our day any one can, for a few shillings, 
command such a libraiy as a sovereign could hardly 



HOME EDUCATION. 69 

possess a few centuries ago. He can now, through the 
magic power of the press, summon the great poets of 
all ages to sing to him their songs, and historians to 
narrate all the results of their researches into the ori- 
gin and rise of nations. Astronomers will appear and 
point out the glories of the heavens, and geologists the 
wonders of the thick-ribhed earth. Travellers will sit 
at his fireside and tell their stories of all they saw by 
land and sea. Divines will repeat to him their most 
eloquent sermons ; and orators the speeches which 
electrified the senate or the bar. Oh I what treasures 
•^ lie in books for the poorest men, which, if they were 
only trained to search for them, by early acquiring 
habits of mental industry, would fill up with delight 
countless hours now lost and wasted in listless languor, 
frittered away by dull and uninteresting talk, or 
abused by debasing dissipation ; and our young money- 
making merchants require to be trained up as much 
as the commonest labourer, to manly habits of mental 
industry beyond those needed merely to become more 
wealthy, which, without such cultivation^ will but en- 
able them to become more gross. 

I refer my readers for lessons upon industry, to such . 
passages as the following from the book of Proverbs : — 

" Go to the ant, thou sluggard ; consader her ways, 
. and be wise : which having no * guide, overseer, or 
ruler, provideth her meat' in the summer, and gather- 
eth her food in the harvest. . How long wilt thou sleep, 
O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? 
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the 



70 HOME EDUCATION. 

bands to sleep : so shall thj poverty come as one that 
travelleth, and thy want as aa ara>ed man.'* 

<< Pie becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: 
hut the hand of the diligent maketh nch. He Ihat 
gathereth in summer is a wise son : but he that sleep- 
eth in harvest is a son that causeth shame." 

^^The soul of the sluggai*d desireth, and h^th 
nothing : but the soul of the diligeat shall be made 
fat Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished : 
but he that gathereth by labour shall increase." 

^' In all labour there is profit : but the talk of the 
lips tendeth only to penury." 

'^ He also that is slothful in his work is Inrodier to 
him that is a great waster." 

" Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep ; and an idle 
soul shall suffer hunger." 

^^ The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I 
shall be slain in tiie streets." 

" For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to 
poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with 
rags." 

" I went by the field of the dothful, and by the vine- 
yard of the man void of understanding ; and, lo, It was 
all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered 
the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken 
down. Then I saw, and considered it well; I looked, 
upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a 
little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep : So 
shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy 
want as an armed man." 



HOME EDUCATIOH. 71 



perseVeeance. 



This habit — ^which is continued industry — is an 
honouring of God's wisdom, for it honours those right 
means bj which, according to His wise appointment, the 
right end can be alone attained. Men are prone to reach 
their objects by short cuts. They would, if possible, by 
a single leap, attain the mountain-top ; rather than 
pursue, step by step, the long and fiitiguing upward 
journey. In other words, men are prone to forget 
God's method of attaining all good by patience and 
persevenuice, and to <expect rewards ioc ignorance 
and sloth. This want of perseverance is the real 
secret of most of the beggary, in pocket and in soul, 
which exists in the world. What could men possess, 
if they only would persevere 1 This same disposition 
is the source of all that is termed quackery^ — a com- 
mon and a sore evil! The fnedical quack promises 
to cure any disease without trouble or expense (!) 
to the patient, and despises colleges and diplomas. 
The ^peculaUng quack promises a fortune to any 
man who is wearied of the slow routine of patient 
industry, and who wishes to get rich at once, if 
he will only invest his means in this new bubble, 
and purchase stock in this new railroad. The teach" 
ing quack professes to give a knowledge ci any lan- 
guage in a few lessons, and, by ^^ short and easy 
methods," to make education a short and an easy pro- 
cess. The preachiag quack professes to explain the 



M I 



72 HOIOB BDUCAXrOK. 

Holy Scriptures much better, and much more cheaply, 
than ^* the college-bred," and without the aid of that 
learning and patient study, which " the regular cler- 
gy" require ; and to make temporary excitement, and 
fluent talk, do the work in a single day, which others 
are seeking to obtain by silent meditation, earnest 
prayer^ diligent reading and hearing, and a carefol 
walking with God. All such quackery is to the sloth- 
ful a very California, in which riches are to be had 
without labour or- perseverance. If men did not hate 
both, they would hate quackery. But believe it not, 
that God has so made the world that fools shall be 
blessed when wise men fail; and that the slothful 
shall be rich in head and hand, while the patient and 
diligent starve! If you parents, then, would save 
your children in after years from a disposition which 
saps the foundation of all that is manly and Christ- 
ian ; which will make the life of godliness intolerable ; 
and the patient, self-denying exercises — the fighting, 
running, striving — of the Christian life impossible: 
train them early to the habit of overcoming difficulties; 
of never vainly seeking anything by a short cut of their 
own devising, but by the path, though long and steep, 
of God's planning ; of attending to the details, if they 
would grasp the results ; of being faithful in the least, 
in order to gain the much : in short, to use a familiar, 
but most expressive proverb, in everything as well as 
money, to ^'attend to the pence, and the pounds will 
take care of themselves." la so doing, they only 



HOKB EDUCATION. 7^ 

honour the wisdom of God, and are acquiring such 
habits as alone can enable them to follow Christ, and 
to *^ endure unto the end.'' 

TRUTH* 

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the importance 
of truth. Our Lord, speaking of the devil — ^^the 
deceiyer'' — says, ^< he abode not in the truths be- 
cause there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a 
lie, he speaketh of hia aum : far he is a Uarj and the 
father of tt" Accordingly, among those who are ex- 
cluded from the presence of God, we find mentioned, 
^^ whosoever maketh a Me;** and ^^all Uara have their 
part in the lake that bumeth with fire and brimstone." 
A lie is therefore begotten of the devil. It is despised 
npon earth by all but the worthless. It never was 
heard in heaven. It can find a lasting dwelling-place 
only with its first parent, in outer darkness I 

Tet. this dreadM thing is among the first fruits 
which are brought forth by the natural ^^ heart, which 
is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." 
How prone are many children ^^ to love, and to make 
a lie I" And let this disposition be left unchecked or 
unchanged in them, how early in life may they become 
brazen-faced, unblushing liars 1 - until, as age advances, 
the habit of deceit so hardens the heart, and blinds the 
conscience, that, as it is often remarked of such, ^^ they 
hardly know when they speak untruly;" — "they do 
not know they are deceiving;" — " they are so deceived 
themselves, that they believe the lie 1" There are few 



74 HOME EDUCATION. 

Tices more common than this, and none which more 
effectuallj bars the heart against the God of truth, 
and separates from the fellowship of all that are '^ in 
Him who is true ; " and so seals the soul up to a sure 
destruction. What language strong enough can I use 
against tiiis false disposition — ^this spirit of all cunning, 
hjpocrisj, cheating, and dishonesty — this enemj of all 
that is lovelj and of good report— this disturber of all 
peace — ^this destroyer of all the bonds of friendship — 
this pest of life — this curse of society — this child of 
hell ! Parents ! cultivate in your children a deep re- 
verence for truth, cmd a deep abhorrence of every tbing 
like deceit. Beware how you suspect, far more accuse 
unjustly, or, by fsar, harden against confession ; but 
where untruth certainly exists, then trace it out, 
should it take weeks to do so, and hunt it down to the 
very death, should it be with pains and tears ! All 
pretence, sham, or double-dealing, — all equivocatioB 
and concealment, — whatever pertains to falsehood, 
do not tolerate. Let your children understand ^at 
you consider n&Mtg more vile or hase^ nothing more crwd- 
nal, than lying, li&t the entrance of a lie into the 
house be to the &imily as a sore affliction and disgrace. 
Whatever your children do or say, train them up 
that they shall do it and say it tru^* Do not 
praise any actions which are even in themselves ap- 
parently good, but which, you have sufficient rea- 
son to believe, are falsely done, from a motive, and 
for an end, different from what is professed. Be- 
ware, how, in seeking to cultivate other good habits 



HOMB EDUCAXION. 75 

jou maj sap the love of truthf which is essential 
to all. In your zeal, for instance, that thej should 
form the habit of giving to missions, and take an inter* 
est in such work, you may insensibly cultivate vanity 
in giving ; impudence and forwardness in collecting ; 
or, worse than all, a pretended love for a good work, 
which they may not, j&om their early age, be able trul^ 
to sympathize with. Beware, in short, lest, under the 
appearance of training to good, you may not in this, 
and in many similar instances, train to mere hypocrisy 
and pret^ice. 

There is a very common feature of imtruth which 
you must also watch and expose, and that is prevari- 
cation, and using words with a double meaning. A 
shocking instance of this was brought to light, before a 
court of justice in Glasgow, a few years ago* A hus- 
band and his wife, in order to obtain some property 
which belonged to an orphan boy left under their charge, 
and which they inherited in the event of his death, 
both gave their oaths before a magistrate, that they had 
seen the boy ^' die." It turned out that those miserable 
perjurers and robbers had got the boy to dip a bit of 
rag in some c^e-stuS, and sent him out of the way to a 
relation in a distant part of the country. They then 
thought that with a safe conscience they could swear 
when asked if he was dead, that they both had seen him 
d^e I (die.) This is a gross instance of a common kind 
of lying i and it shews the necessity of training the 
young to habits of simple unadorned truth, transparent 
dealing, and open candour^ in all their words and ac- 



76 HOME EDUCATIOK. 

tions ; so that they may hate and fear a lie in every 
form, as they would the father of it; and love the 
truth, as they would love God, of whom it is. Your 
children may have neither learning, genius, rank, or 
riches ; but, oh ! for the sake of all that is honourable, 
good, and lovely, in time and eternity— let them have, 
what is better than these, the love of truth t Let them 
know, that it is better far to tell the truth, and die in 
consequence of doing so ; than to live for ages in a 
palace and on a throne, by telling one lie ! Nor are 
those advices needed only for the working-classes. In 
every rank of life d6es this brood of Satan shew itself. 
There are lies which fashion licenses, as base in God*s 
sight as their more vulgar relations ; insincere profes- 
sions, false excuses, hollow pretences, promises never 
intended to be fulfilled. In many such ways may the 
lying spirit manifest itself, as really as in the grosser 
form of what is termed " cool and deliberate Ijdng." 
The liar may never be detected in this world, — though 
he is generally better known than he suspects himself to be, 
"but* there is nothing covered that shall not be re- 
vealed ; neither hid that shall not be known. There- 
fore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be 
heard in the light ; and that which ye have spoken in 
the ear in closets shall be proclaimed on the hoase- 
tops." Then "all that speak lies shall not escape, 
but shall be cut off." Let our prayer be : — « Lord ! 
Thou who desirest truth in the inward parts," who 
" hatest the false witness that speaketh lies," " lead us 
in truth," and "remove from us the way of lying!" 



BOHE EDUCATIOK. 77 

Inseparably connectecUwith truth is 

HONESTT. 

These both stand and fall together. A fah>e tongue 
will always have a &lse hand ; and £alse words difiSsr little 
from false coin. Parents are very apt to overlook little 
acts of dishonesty in their children ; but let them re- 
member, that it is not the value of what they may take 
from the press or from the parcel which should con- 
cern them ; hut the value of their child's character. 
The dishonest clerk has generally learned his lessons 
as a dishonest child ; and the faithless servant hais often 
begun her faithlessness under her mother's roo£ 

Honesty is also intimately connected with habits of 
industry and self-sacrifice. The lazy man would rather 
steal money, than rise early and work late for it. It 
is easier also to specuUxte merely and run the risk of 
ruining industrious &milies, if a fortune can possibly be 
thus made without trouble, than to seek a competency 
by means of persevering industry. The selfish man 
must have his indulgences, let who may sufier ; and to 
supply these, he will, under honest names, be guilty of 
mean and dishonest practices. '^ Let ours," says Paul, 
writing of how Christians ought to live, "learn to 
maintain good works," or, as it is more correctly trans- 
lated, ^^ profess honest trades for necessary purposes, that 
they be not unfruitful." An honest trade, and industry 
in it, are great safeguards against dishonesty. 

Dishonesty is one of the most alarming signs of our 
times. It may be^ tbat the evil is now more rigidly 



78 Hon SDUCATIOK. 

investigated, or more freqaent]j exposed in public than 
heretofore ; but its prevalence is unquestionable to an 
extent which seems to evidence a £rightful corruption 
of morals. It is found in everj class, and m every 
business. There is no rank, trade, or profession, in 
the honour of whidi implicit ccHifidence has not been 
shaken. Dishonesty adulterates almost every article 
which we eat or drink. It drugs our wine and beer; 
chalks or waters our milk ; steeps our loaves in alum ; 
infuses our tea with earth ; dusts our spices, and poi- 
sons our very medicines. There is nothing we put on, 
from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, 
which does not bear the marks of dishonest handling. 
It defrauds the revenue of millions, and the confiding 
consumer of millions more. Tradesmen, small and 
great, in the country village and great metropolis, 
cheat their customers, whether peer or peasant ; and 
peer and peasant are equally found defaulters in the 
books of the tradesman. The bankrupt this year 
ruins thousands by his reckless and unprincipled spe- 
culations; and next year, lolls in his easy carriage, 
and criticises the champagne which he pours out 
in liberal potations to his admiring guests. Dishon- 
esty is the chief complaint of employers and em- 
ployed. In the family, the shop, the factory, the 
exchange, it is all the same. Men ask where is the 
trustworthy servant, so common in the olden time T — 
or where the high-toned British merchant, whose spirit 
ruled the mart, and whose goods and word were 
trusted in the remotest island or desert? There are 



HOME EDUCATION. 79 

msnj noble exceptions to this state of lyings. Of 
course. there are — tens of thousands ; and these are the 
8al& of the landy that keep it firom becoming wholly cor- 
rupt* 

'* There are in thts load sttinnin^ tide 

Of hamsn catre and orlme* 
With whom the melodies abide 

Of th* eyerlasting chime ; 
Who carry musiein their hmrt 
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart^ 
Plying their didly task with bvsier feet, 
BecavM tibMr secret sqnls a holy atrvn repeat.'* 

But whence the prevalence among professing Chiist* 
ians even, of a spirit very different from this? Whence 
this sore evil of dishonesty? Is it the necessary 
result of the worship of mammon, — of this mania to 
become rich, and this monstrous and false exagger- 
ation of the advantages of being so? We know 
^'that. they that will be rich,'* who insist upon it, 
^'fall into temptation and a snare, and into many 
foolish and hurtful lusts, whidx drown men in destruc- 
tion and perdition ; for the love of money is the root 
of all evil.*' Such a love is surely singularly pre- 
valent in our day, and the growth of evil from this 
root exceeding rank ; dishonesty being one of its most 
vigorous stems. 

But may not teachers and trainers in the school, the 
feunily, and pulpit, take blame to themselves for not 
being more specific and earnest in their instructions 
upon the Christian life? Do they give that promi- 
nency to its details which Scripture gives; but especi- 



80 HOMB EDUCATION. 

ally the teaching of our Lord? Is the moral atmo- 
sphere breathed by society, or even by those who are 
professedly members of the Church of Christ, at all 
saturated as it might be with right apprehensions of 
what the living God loves and abhors ; and of what a 
Christian is, and cannot, as a Christian, otherwise be T 

See to it, then, that in the Home school the subject 
of honesty is made a chief lesson of instruction by word 
and life, as that which God loves; and dishonesty, 
practised under any name, however fair, or for any 
cause, however specious or profitable, as that which 
He hates. Hear His words :— 

<< The righteous God loveth righteousness/* 

<' Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie 
one to another. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, 
neither rob him : the wages of him that is hired shall 
not abide with thee all night until the morning. Te 
shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, 
in weight, or in measure.** 

<^ Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them 
are alike abomination to the Lord." 

^^ To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to 
the Lord than sacrifice." 

*' Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unright- 
eousness, and his chambers by wrong ; that useth his 
neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not 
for his work.*' 

^' Bender therefore to all their dues : tribute to whom 
tribute is due ; custom to whom custom ; fear to whom 
fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man anj 



HOME EDUCATIOK. 81 

thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth 
another hath fulfilled the law." 

I shall conclude this chapter by quoting the experi- 
ence of Mrs. Wesley in training her family : — 

" In order to form the mind of children," observes 
this excellent mother and teacher, in a letter to her 
son, (Wesley,) in after years, explanatory of her method 
of ]M*oceduTe, " the first thing to be done, is to conquer 
their will. To inform the understanding, is the work 
of time, and must, with children, proceed by slow de- 
grees, as they are able to bear it ; but the subjecting 
the will is a thing that must be done at once, and the 
Booner the letter; for, by neglecting timely correction, 
they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which 
are hardly ever after conquered, and never without 
using such severity as would be as painful to me as 
the child. In the esteem of the world they pass for 
kind and indulgent, . whom I call cruel parents, who 
permit their children to get habits which they know 
must be afterwards broken. When the will of a child 
is subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in 
awe of its parents, then a great many childish follies 
and inadvertencies may be passed by. Somir^ should 
be overlooked, and others reproved; but no wiljul 
transgression ought to be forgiven children, without 
chastisement, less or more, as the nature and circum- 
stances of the ofience may require. I insist upon con- 
quering the vjiU of children betimes, because this is the 
only strong and rational foundation of a religious edu- 
cation^ without which, both precept and example will 



82 BOMB SDOfCATION. 

be indOfectuaL But wlieii this is thoroughly done, 
then a child is capable of being govenijed bj the reason , 
and piety of its p^^rents, till its own understanding 
comes to maturity, and the principles of religion havo 
taken root in the zoind. 

^'I cannot dismiss this subject yet. As idf-^will is 
the root of all sin and misery, so whfitever cherishes 
this in i^dren, ensures their wretchedness and iirdii- 
gion ; whatever checks and mortifies it, promotes their 
future happiness and piety. This is still more evident) 
if we consider that religion is nothing else than doing 
the uM of Qod^ and not our own ; th^t the one grand 
impediment to. our temporal and eternal happiness 
being this self-will, no indulgence of it can be trivial, 
no denial of it unprofitable. Heaven or hell depends 
on this alone ; so that the p^M^ent who stupes to sub- 
due it in bis child, works together widi God in the 
repewing and saving a souL The parent who indulges 
it, does the devil's work, makes religion impracticable, 
salvation unattainable, and does all that in him lies to 
damn his child, soul and body, for ever. 

^' Our children were taught, as soon as they could 
speak, the Lord's prayer, which they were made to say 
at rising and bed-time constantly; to which, as they 
grew older, were added a short prayer for their parents, 
and some portion of Scripture, as ]their memories 
could bear. They were very early made to distin- 
guish the Sabbath from other days. They were 
taught to be still at fisunily prayers, and to ask a bless- 
ing immediately after meals, which they used to do bj 



HOME EDUCATION. 83 

signs, before they could speak, or kneel. Thej were 
quickly made to understand that they should have 
nothing they cried for^ and instructed to speak respect- 
folly for what they wanted." We cannot read without 
interest the principles of the home school, in which 
Buch men as John and Charles Wesley were trained 
up in their youth. 



84 



CHAPTER VII. 

TRAIKING. 
BY EXAMPLE AND PRECEPT. 

**I will itrait condact you to a hill-side, where I wiU point ye oat the 
right path of a Tirtuoas education ; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but 
else so smooth, so gpreen, so Aill of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds 
on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.**->-JfiHoii 
on JBdueation, 

The important question is now presented more directly 
for our consideration : — How, or by what means, is a 
child to be trained up in the way he should go f This 
question primarily affects the character and conduct of 
parents, — ^What shall they be or do, in order that 
their children shall acquire good habits, and grow up 
from strength to strength under their roof as children 
of God ripening for immortality? A momentous ques- 
tion, verily, for it concerns the root of the domestic 
tree. 
I reply, in the first place, train them up by 

EXAMPLE. 

The common proverb says truly, that " example is 
better than precept." It is the precept embodied in 
practice, — ^the dead word translated into actual life. 



HOUB EDUCATION. 85 

In yain is the precept given, when the example of 
the parent proves that what he would have his children 
receive as good, is rejected as being unworthy of his 
own faith or practice. Of what avail is it for a parent 
to tell his children to pray, if he himself never bends 
the knee ? — to be sober, if he comes reeling home? — ^to 
be industrious, kind, truthful, if he is idle, cruel, &Ise? 
But this is really such a wicked mockery that no 
parent can habitually be guilty of it. The worst con- 
science revolts at it, and accordingly the precept is soon 
given up, and the example allowed to do its own ter- 
rible work of leading the children, by the most power- 
ful means which the parent can employ, to follow 
himself to destruction. 

Men shudder as they read of some maniac father or 
mother destroying their babes along with themselves in 
some sudden fit of frenzy. What is this to the moral 
mania which daily and hourly trains up a family to 
become devils t If they escape this dreadful consum- 
mation of a wicked character, no thanks to the parents. 
But though the parental teaching by word, and the 
training by life, may not be so palpably and grossly 
inconsistent as this, yet if they do not tally, if the one 
is not on the whole a comment upon the other, and there 
is wanting the positive influence of a good example, 
never can those results be looked for in the fiunily 
which it alone is capable of producing, and will as a 
rule produce wherever it exists. 

Now there is a form in which the example of a parent 
tells upon the character of his children which is apt to 



86 HOME XDUCATtOir. 

be Overlooked^ and that is its marvellous power beyond 
the intention of him who shows it* Example must not 
be associated merely with such pomtive efforts as a 
parent may put forth to be and do what is right in the 
presence of his ehiXdren, even though perhaps disposed 
to act otherwise. I would have you think of it rather 
as made up of that whole influence which he necessarilj 
exercises in his fiimily by what he is: fot depend upon 
it, the real spirit of a man's life, his inner character, 
that Which God knows him to be, will show itself in 
ways innumerable, whether he wishes it or not, thinks 
about it or not-^out it must cornel B will shine 
through chinks and crannies of the outer man, which 
no skill, foresight, or prudence can close up. It will 
ooze out by the look of the eye^ the words of the 
mouth, the movements of foot and hand, by what is 
done or left undone. It will go ferth firom a man as 
unconsciously and unwittingly as mysterious emana- 
tions of contagious disease from a sick body, or refi*e8h- 
ing fragrance from an odoriferous plant under the dew 
of evening. 

It is this kind of influence which, constitutes the 
spirit of the family,-^the atmoe^here which they breathe, 
the food by which their souls are daily fed. It is this 
influence of example, of what parents actually arej 
which is the greatest of all powers, the most essential 
of all means^ in training up the child in the way he 
should go. " We begin our mortal eatperience,** says 
a distinguished Ammcan writer, "not with acts 
grounded in ju^ment or reason, or with ideas received 



HOME EDUCATION. 87 

througli langtiage, bat by siniple imitation, and, under 
the guidance of this, we lajr our foundations. The 
ch3d looks and listi^d, and whatsoever tone of feeling 
or manner of conduct is displayed around him, sinks 
into his plJEUstic, passive soul, and becomes a mould of 
his being ever after. The very handling of the nursery 
is significant, and the petulance, the passion, the gen-* 
tleness, the tranquillity indicated by it, are all repro* 
duced in the child. His soul is a purely receptive na- 
ture^ and that, for a considerable period, without 
cht>ice or sielection. A little farther on, he begins vol- 
untarily to copy everything he sees. Voice, manner, 
gait, everything which the eye sees, the mimic instinct 
delights to act over. And thuswe have a whole gene- 
ration of future men, receiving frottt us their very be- 
ginnings, aild the deepest impulses of their lifb and 
immortality. They watch us every moment— in the 
^unily, before the hearth, and at the table ; and whei« 
we are meaning them no good or evil, when we are 
consciousr of exerting no influence over them, they are 
drawing from us impressions and moulds of habit, 
which, if wrong, no patience of discipline can wholly 
remove ; or, if right, no foture exposure utterly dissi- 
pate. Now it may be doubted, I think, whether, in 
all the active infiue^ce of our liv^ we do as much to 
shape the destiny of our fellowmen, a& we do in thi» 
single article of unconscious influence over children." 
"The child sees the world through the parents' eyes. 
Their objects become his ; their life and spirit mould 
him. If they are carnal, coarse, passionate, profane. 



88 HOHB EDnOATTOir.r 

sensual, devilish, his little plastic nature takes the poi- 
son of course. He lives, moves, and has his being in 
them." And again, ^< Few parents are so base, or so 
lost to natural affection, as really to intend the injury 
of their children. However irreligious or immoral, 
they more commonly desire a worthy and correct 
character for their children, oflen even a Christian 
character. But it is not what jo\k intend for your 
children so much as what you are that is to have this 
effect. They are connected, by an organic unity, not 
with your instructions but with your life; and your 
life is more powerful than your instructions can be. 
* . . . There are Christians who intend and do 
many things for their children, and thus acquit them- 
selves of all blame for their character. Here, alas I is 
the perpetual error of Christian parents, so called, that 
they endeavour to make up, by direct efforts, for the 
mischiefs of a loose and neglectful life. They convince 
themselves that teaching, lecturing, watching, discipline, 
and things done with a purpose, are the sum of duty, 
as if mere affectations and will-works could cheat the 
laws of life and character ordained by God 1 Your 
character is a stream, a river, flowing down upon your 
children hoA: by hour. What you do here and there 
to carry an opposing influence is, at best, only a ripple 
that you make on the surface of the stream. It reveals 
the sweep of the current, nothing more. If you ex- 
pect your children to go with the ripple instead of the 
stream you will be disappointed. Understand that it 
is the family spirit, that which works by an uncon- 



HOME EIKUCATIOK. 89 

scions, unseen power, and perpetuallj— tfte dUnt power 
of a domestic godliness — this it is which forms your 
children to God. And if this he wanting, all that you 
may do beside will be as likely to annoy and harden 
as to bless." 

It is the want of this life in the parents, this kind of 
example, which chiefly accounts for the apparent fruit- 
lessness of what seemed to be a home Christian educa- 
tion. It was not Christian. The Christian words, and 
phrases, and forms, may possibly have been there, but, 
nevertheless, death reigned. There was no Christian 
lift. On the other hand, there has often been wanting 
in families anything like good religious teaching by 
word or book ; for the parents had not in early life the 
advantages of good education, or they did not possess 
the art of imparting what they know, or had possibly 
a painful difficulty in expressing their thoughts or feel- 
ings. But they were nevertheless really loving and 
pious. The children felt their influence, like light and 
warmth which came, they hardly knew from whence, 
whether in the mother's look or smile, or in the father's 
voice and fireside life ; yet everywhere diffused in the 
house, and which accompanied them like a presence 
when they left home and while they lived. ^^ I do not 
know," said a young person once to me, ^' what there 
was about my father, but without speaking a word his 
influence upon me was like magic. He always seemed 
to me to be in the presence of some one whom others 
did not see, and to possess in his mind and heart what 
gave him a peace and patience diflerent altogether 



90 HOME EDUGAnonv 

from what I saw in others, or found in mjself. I felt 
him awing me, yet drawing me to him, and drawing 
me out of niyself to God. I cannot remember dis- 
tinctly any one thing be ever said, or any particular 
conversation, as having been the special means of 
doing me good. But what he was nioulded me, under 
God, from childhood, to what I am." 

There are one or two practical applications of this 
truth which I would press upon the earnest attention 
of parents. 

1. Let them carefoUy weigh their personal responsi- 
bility for what they themselves care^ and therefore for 
the influence which thus they cannot choose but exer- 
cise upon the character of their children. It is quite 
true that they " cannot answ^ for their children," as 
the phrase is ; but they must do so for themselves, and 
thus indirectly answer for them also. 

2. See how much easier, simpler, as well as absol- 
utely essential, it is to 5e good, by giving the heart to 
God, than trying to speak and act only Uke one who 
is good. How different is life from every imitation 
of it ! How much better it is to open the eye and see 
all things^ than with shut eyes to endeavour to walk 
and work as if in light! 

8. Consider the dreadful selfishness of sin, when, 
rather than be decided in religion to know God, to do 
His will in aU things, parents will run the risk even, 
and bear the thought, not only of losing their own 
souls, but of losing the souls of their children ! 

In the second place, train up your children by 



HOlfE EDUCATION. 91 



FRBCEPT. 



Example, tkough bigber and better than precept, is 
not to exclude it. Children, to be weU trained, require- 
to be well instructed. They are to be brought up " in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord.'^ 

The iustruction I speak of is that measure of religious 
teaching which intelligent parents ought to impart to 
their children at home, whatever they may receive in 
school. 

In providing for the religiotfs teaching of the early 
Church, children were especially cared for. The 
Lord said unto Moses, ** Gather the people together, 
men, and women, and childreuj and thy stranger 
that IB within thy gates, that they may hear^ and 
that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, 
and observe to do all the words of this law ; and that 
their children, which have not known any thing, may 
hear and learn to fear the Lord your God." Such hear- 
ing and learning as this is required now as well as then. 

Much instruction, as I have already hinted, may be 
given to the child before it is able to read, regarding 
God the Father; Jesus the Saviour; prayer; the 
beauty and excellency of truth; kindness, obedience, 
conscientiousness ; love to God and man ; and also the 
baseness and danger of sin in every form. 

As the child advances in years, the Bible will be 
found the best direct source of religious instruction. 
The Bible is a map of the way, witih the diangers and 
difficulties which beset the " pilgrim's progress." The 



92 HOME EDUCATION. 

Bible is a trectmry^ from which he may obtain riches to 
last during the whole journey, — ^for heavenly Wisdom 
says, ^' I love them that love me, and those that seek . 
me early shall find me. Riches and honour are with 
me, — yea, durable riches and righteousness." The 
Bible is an infallible gtdde^ who will never lead him 
astray : ^' I lead in the way of righteousness, in the 
midst of the paths of judgment." And, again, ^' I will 
instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou 
shalt go." The Bible is an arm(yury^ from which he 
can be furnished with << the whole armour of God," to 
defend him from every foe that may beset his path. 
In one word, ^^ the law of the Lord is perfect^ convert- 
ing the soul." 

It is not the least striking feature of this marvellous 
book, that the old and young can read it together ; 
with diiferent degrees, indeed, but with the same kind 
of delight and edification. The grey-haired philosopher, 
and the Sabbath school child, may together drop their 
tears over its pathetic narratives, and with breathless 
interest peruse its solemn pictures of God's judgments. 
Children are fond of facts. They apprehend and relish 
truth conveyed to them by a story or in a history, more 
than in an abstract form. The Bible is almost a volume 
of facts ; being a revelation of God in history. It re- 
lates the rise and fall of mighty nations and great cities ; 
and alone records the origin and early progress of the 
human race, with special reference to the origin and pro- 
gress of the Church, from the days of Adam^ to the time 
of Christ. It is full of the most interesting biographies 



HOME EDUCATION. 93 

of pious men and women — of prophets, priests, patri- 
archs, judges, kings, and queens — ^who lived thousands 
of years ago ; bringing their whole lives before us with 
the vividness of recent events. It abounds in examples 
for our encouragement, of those who, in every variety 
of circumstances, — on the throne and in the dungeon 
— in health and in sickness — among friends or foes — 
in a land of ordinances, or among idolaters — in youth 
or in old age — in times of outward peace, or at the risk 
of their lives, — lived by faith in the living God, and 
were not put to shame ! It abounds, also, in examples 
for our warning, of men who, in the same circumstances, 
disobeyed God, and were punished by His righteous 
judgments. The ten commandments form a compen- 
dium of duty, which a child may in early years commit 
to memory ; while the Books of Proverbs and Eccles- 
iastes are full of instruction for every-day life, suited 
specially to the young. There are Psalms of David 
which a child may repeat at its mother's knee, and 
which an angel might sing before the throne of God. 

We have no sympathy whatever with those who 
have scruples in putting the whole of the Old Testa- 
ment into the hands of the young. By God's own 
express command, the children as well as adults were 
to hear read aloud in public; and learn at home the 
statutes and judgments delivered to Moses. We have 
already quoted one passage shewing this : here is an- 
other, — " These words I command thee this day, shall 
be in thine heart ; and thou shalt teach them diligently 
unto thy children^ and shalt talk of them when thou 



94 HOME EDUOATIOK. 

sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the 
waj, and when thou liest dowu^ and when thou risest 
up." We are more and more convinced of the pro- 
found wisdom of this arrangement, and believe that the 
discovery of evil, through the foul and subtile instruc- 
tion of the wicked, is what injures the young, and not 
holy and solemn warning by parents as to what evil is, 
and what men may become and do, as recorded by 
God, the wise, the pure, the holy, in His Word. Thus 
to impart with reverence and awe to the young, before 
they enter the world, and leav& the parental roof, 
such knowledge of evil as will enable them to avoid 
the pits into which they are prone to fall, is, I 
humbly think, with God's blessing, the most effectual 
means of saving them. But not to dwell on this, I 
remark further that the New Testament is specially 
suited to interest, as well as edify a child. Here we 
have the history of Jesus Christ from his very child- 
hood; with His simple teaching, which the common 
people heard gladly ; His marvellous miracles, each a 
picture on which a child can gaze with delight; His won- 
derful parables, from whose clear and placid stream a 
child can drink, and which those who thirst most after 
righteousness cannot exhaust : — all ended by the un^ 
paralleled wonders of His trial, sufferings, death, resur- 
rection, and ascension. In the Acts of the Apostles, 
we have the history of the planting of the Christian 
Church, with its early sufferings and triumphs, — the 
conversion, labours, travels, mirades, and teaching of 
St. Paul and his fellow-apostles; — while, in each of 



HOMH SPUOATZON. 95 

the Epistles, there is much personal history to interest, 
and also such concise and simple statements of Chris- 
tian doctrine, privilege, and duty, as may be milk to 
babes, as "w ell as strong meat for men. This, then, is 
the duly of parents: to impajrt to their children 
religions instruction directly from, and grounded upon, 
the Word of God; so that it may with truth be i^id, in 
riper years, to each of th^m, what Paul said to Timothy, 
^^ From a child thou hast Juiown the Holy. Scriptures, 
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture 
is given by inspiration of* God, and is profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness; that ihe man of God may be perfect, 
ihor<mghly farmhed unto all good works." 

Christian parents have, in this highly-^aivoured 
country, much to assist them in the work of religious 
teaching. In every parish school, at least, and in 
most others, the Bible is daily read, and the Shorter 
Catechism taught. God grant that it may ever con- 
tinue to be so in our public schools, for although 
this may not necessarily be religious training, yet it 
is such religious teaching of the facta of revelation 
as neither the pitrent nor the pastor could otherwise 
overtake, and without which the higher training is im- 
possible. Besides, there are few parishes without one or 
more Sabbath schools. It is unnecessary that I should 
here attempt to estimate the moral value of the religious 
instruction afforded to the rising generation by teachers, 
either in week-day, or Sabbath schools. Whatever 



96 HOSCE EDUCATION. 

defects maj cling to them, it is not too much to assert, 
that, but for them, the vast majority of our people 
would be comparatively ignorant of the facts and first 
principles of religion. At the same time, I must warn 
parents against the danger of making either, even the 
Sabbath school, a substitute for all home-instruction in 
religion. 

In the numerous cases, alas ! which occur in every 
parish, of careless, ignorant, or wicked parents, who 
cannot, or wiU not thus instruct their children, — ^al- 
most any school is a blessing, and any Sabbath class a 
gain. But in the case of pious, intelligent parents, it 
is otherwise. The best Sabbath class can be an aid 
only, never a substitute, for the lessons of such a 
teacher; while the danger must not be overlooked, 
of the well brought up child being positively injured 
in a Sabbath school. For, let a Sabbath class be first 
ill-arranged, and the children who are ill-taught and 
ill-trained at home mingled with the well-j^ught and 
well -trained ; then let (his class have a teacher i^ant- 
ing in piety, information, common sense, or the power 
of command; and it is very certain that, in such a class, 
children may be every Sabbath trained up to habits of 
inattention, irreverence, disobedience, rudeness; even 
though taught to learn lessons^ and repeat verses from 
the Bible, or answers from the Catechism. 

Parents should feel their responsibility when they 
give their children, even for an hour, to be taught by 
any one on earth. They should make it a point d 
duty to know /ww, where^ whatj by whom^ and among 



HOME BDUGATIOir. 97 

whom, they are taught. God has laid the harden of 
training up the young upon the shoulders of the pa-* 
rent first. He may make use of every aid, — good Sah- 
hath classes among the rest, to enahle him to carry 
this hurden, — hut he dare not transfer it wholly to an- 
other ; because God has given to himself an authority, 
influence, and power, over his child, which no (Hie else 
can possess. There is a magic influence in a parent's 
voice and words, and in a loving parent's eye, which 
belongs to tio other teacher in this world 1 Holy and 
blissful is the hour — sweet at the time, and sweeter 
still in memory — ^when a child is taught to know its 
loving Father in heaven, by the lips of its beloved 
parent upon earth ! And what parent, knowiDg 
himself the blessings of salvation, will not esteem it 
one of his highest privileges, to be made the instru- 
ment of uniting his own dear child to himself for 
ever in the indissoluble bonds of Christ ? 

I cannot, then, help expressing my fears lest, with 
much incalculable good, the Sabbath school may be 
the occasion of doing incalculable evil, by tempting 
Christian parents, to substitute wholly for their own 
instruction in the things of God, the instruction of the 
school. My firm belief is, that very ordinary religious 
instruction, such as an intelligent and pious artizan 
can impart to his children, easily, cheerfully, and 
naturally, at his own fireside on Sabbath evening, is 
incomparably superior in its results upon character 
to what the best Sabbath school that exists can 
impart — and many exist Ihat are very far from being 



98 HOKE BDaoAnoac 

the best The Sabbath gehool, as at present oonsti- 
tuted, ought to be recognised chiefly as a home mission 
to the children of the ignorant and godless, and the 
more it is kept to this sphere the better for the pietj 
of oar people. 

The instmction given by a minister to his cate- 
chumens^ or to the yonnger members of his flock, 
does not properly belong to ordinary Sabbath school 
teaching. 

But when is this home instmction to be afforded 
by the Christian parent t Now, without entering upon 
a discussion as to ihe possibili^ of a working-mao, 
who is hard wrought from morning to night, being 
able to devote any portion of a week-day to the 
teaching of hid fitnuLy-^-^-beyond what they must in- 
directly receive from the reading of the Word and 
prayer during domestie worship, — ^let me rather remind 
such of the privilege of their having one day of rest, 
when this duty may be, and ought to be, specially 
attended to ;— ^when parents and children may together 
prepare to join the family of God and the household 
of heaven. Upon the Sabbath evening they should 
be all assembled together, and some time devoted to 
cheerfiil religious examination and instruction. I say 
cheerjuij not sour and harsh, not cold and heartless, not 
such as must turn the Sabbath evening into an object 
of dislike or terror. Conversation on the sermons 
they have heard during the day, or on the Scripture 
lessons they have been taught during the week in 
school, or on the books which they have been reading; 



HOHB BBUCATIOV. 99 

along with a few questions from the Catechism, and 
the reading of the Scriptures, accompanied bj short 
examination on what is read, — all concluded bj prayer, 
— ^may form suitable exercises for the Sabbath evening. 
There are also many admirable cheap periodicals 
published, calculated to instruct and interest old and 
young upon Sabbath evening; and one or more of 
which ought to form a part of the household library, 
along with other works of a more permanent charac- 
ter.* In order that the whole members 6f the family 
should, upon this hallowed evening at least, assemble 
together in peace and love ; and that nothing should 
break in upon time so precious, it is desirable that 
those who have had the privilege of attending worship 
during the day, should remain at home and attend 
to their domestic duties during the ev^ing, rather 
than spend it in hearing an additional sermon. There 
are special occasions when a departure from this rule 
may be allowable ; but, as an ordinary habit, I believe 
it to be most pernicious, because interfering with much 
more important duties. For it is surely of far greater 
consequence to the best interests of the family, that 
the evening should be spent in some such way as I 
have ' indicated, and in cultivating those affections 
between parents and children, brothers and sisters, 

• Such periodicals as the Chriitian TWoniry, Leisure How, Sunday at 
Hornet &c., and serials like ** The Fireside Libraiy," with select volumes 
published by the BeUgious and other Tract Societies; Biographies of the 
good ; and narratives of the labours of missionaries at home and abroad. 
The '* Peep of Day" is the best introduction for the young extant to their 
study of the Scriptures. 



100 HOim SDUCATIOK* 

which are yery apt to be weakened by the constant 
labours of a scattered fiEunilj daring the week, than, 
for the third time, to worship in church or chapel. I 
am persuaded that many parents attend evening ser- 
mons, not so much from their love of good as from 
their love of idleness ; finding that it requires far less 
painstaking and self-denial to spend two hours in 
public, while thear children may be idle at home, 
playing about the streets, or handed over to a Sab- 
bath school teacher, than to visit with Christian 
sympathy a poor or sick neighbour, and to devote 
some portion of the evening to pious exercises and 
cheerful Christian intercourse with their own family. 

Such Sabbath evening instruction as this is quite 
compatible with that measure of out-door enjoyment 
with wife and children, or friend, which those know 
best how to relish who have been pent up during the 
week in "the dusky lane. and wrangling mart." Sab- 
bath " amusements " and f ^ excursions " we abominate 
as inconsistent with the whole spirit of the Sabbath, 
because inimical to the true good and highest happi- 
ness of man. But how consistent with and helpfrd to 
both, is the quiet, peaceful walk, where it can be had, 
amidst the refreshing scenes of God's own lovely world: 
— "in those vernal seasons of the year," as Milton says, 
"when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury 
and a sullenness against Nature not to go out and see 
her richness and partake in her rejoicing with heaven 
and earth." 

There is another view, which I would suggest for 



HOME EDUCATION. J 01 

consideration, of the importance and advantage of the 
Home school for such religious instruction as I have 
indicated above, and that is its indirect but powerful 
influence upon the parents themselves. Much of the 
religious knowledge and clear apprehension of Divine 
truth, which unquestionably distinguished our Scotch 
peasantry at one time above all people on earthy was 
owing not merely to the prominency given to teach- 
ing from the pulpit, but chiefly, and perhaps as a 
result of the double influence of the parish school 
and ^e parish church, to the teaching given by them* 
selves to their children and domestics at home. Each 
home was a Sabbath school, of which the head of the 
house was the teacher. An immense stimulus was 
thus created by the call of a universally acknowledged 
duty prompting the parent to become well-informed. 
Sabbath schools originated in England, where such 
habits were unknown. They have, since then, become 
important aids everywhere to weak congregations as a 
means of recruiting their numbers. They are immense 
blessings, when properly organized, in densely peopled 
districts which have sunk down into ignorance, and 
where pastoral teaching and superintendence are im- 
possible. But again I say, let them ever be made to 
foster and encourage, and never to interfere with the 
better and more advanced state of things — that of the 
Home Sabbath school, taught by Christian parents. 

It may be expected that I shall say something 
here upon the kind of books by which parents 
may indirectly instruct or amuse their children 



102 HOME SDUCATIOir. 

on week-days. As the question, which is a verj 
common one, is generally put with reference to the 
propriety of giving them what are called "story- 
books," I can only say, with great deference to 
wiser heads who may differ from me, that I see no 
reason for banishing from, but many for keeping 
in, the children's library, the old classics of Blue 
Beard, Jack the Giant Killer, Beauty and the Beast, 
&c., which were, I doubt not, the first to delight 
ourselves, and the perusal of which, as &r as I have 
ever heard, has never been looked back to with regret 
by any Christian when he became a man, and put 
away childish things. There are many " religi- 
ous" books for the young now published, whose 
tendency, in spite of the best intentions of their 
writers, is anything but healthy, — books in which 
children are made to think like old and matured 
Christians, to recount their experiences in a way 
which even they would shrink from, and who, in 
short, are utterly unlike any we ever meet with in 
real life, or perhaps would like to meet with, so £sdse 
and unnatural do they seem. Moreover, they are 
always sure to die when young. Thus the impres- 
sion is given that all good children must be like those 
in the book, and must think like them, and, alas ! die 
like them ; — and if so, then the conclusion is inevitable 
that piety in childhood is not to be desired I 

But there are very many "religious" books, however, 
of unexceptionable character, whose whole tendency is 
to foster in the juvenile reader aU that is ri^t and true 



HOiqB XOUCATION. 103 

in heart and life, and whi^h are precious aids to home 
education. There are also delightful volumes on 
natural history calculated to cultiyate in children 
the most wholesome of all tastes, the love of nature, 
and to make them notice and search for the ^orious 
and inexhaustible treasures which God has poured 
out for the eje and ear, for the heart and head, 
in the magnificent world aiound them, — on the 
sea-shore, and open field, in wood and stream, on 
mountain and moorland, by day and night,-— all 
affording a quiet joy that will never grow old, but 
which the patriarch can share with the child, and 
angels with men* 

Then, again, there are books of anothw kind, 
— ^histories of men and nations, especially those of 
our own country, and of its deeds on land and sea, 
in church and state; true stories of the great and 
brave, the generous, self-sacrificing, and patriotic; 
narratives of the difficulties overcome in the pursuit 
of knowledge, or in the discharge of duty; actual 
adventures by field and fiood, shewing what firmness, 
courage, and perseverance can accomplish and endure; 
— books which are fitted to inspire ther young with an 
admiration of what is manly and heroic These ought 
to have their place and right value attached to them 
in the home library. << And," as Milton says, ''what 
glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry 
both in human and divine things I" 

And why should I be silent about song, as a means 
of linking pure and lofty sentiments with the imagin- 



104 HOME EDUCATION. 

ation and the feelings! Milton, in his well-known 
Letter on Education, already quoted, speaking of music, 
and of '' elegant voices, tuned to religions, martial, or 
civic ditties," adds, " which, if wise men and prophets 
be not extremely out, have a great power over disposi- 
tions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle 
from rustic harshness and distempered passions." 
It cannot be denied that music in families, with or 
without any instrument but the voice, might be made 
a source of immense enjoyment, and make the fireside 
in the evening a scene of greater attraction to children, 
and a better school for education. Out of the mouths 
of babes and sucklings has God ordained praise. We 
advocate, therefore, the singing of well^selected hymns, 
which express such sentiments as the young can truly 
express, as well as the old. But we would not ex- 
clude from the family circle any song which embodied 
a feeling right for a good man to cherish or indulge. 
Many of our dear old Scotch songs, embalmed in the 
hearts and memories of our countrymen throughout 
the world, with others which commemorate the great 
and brave deeds of those who have fought for our 
hearths and homes, should be taught our children 
as well as hymns that sing of loftier and eternal 
themes. It is remarkable how the children of the 
pious Jew possessed the singular advantage of hav- 
ing, as the theme of his songs, the history of his 
own country and kindred. He could sing praises 
to Him " who smote great nations, and slew mighty 
kings; Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king 



HOME EDUCATION. 105 

of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan: and 
gSTO their land for an heritage, an heritage unto 
Israel His people." And why should not the Chris- 
tian child be taught to connect with God the varied 
gifts both of His providence and His grace, and to 
sing about common mercies, and the blessings be- 
stowed bj Him upon his country and his home! 



106 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TRAINING — ^WTTH LOYE — FIRMNESS — PEBSEYERANCE— 

AND WATCHFULNESS. 

" Consider what a religious education in the wide sense of the word is :— 
it is no other than a training of cliildren to life eternal ; no other than the 
making them know and loye God. know and abhor eyil; no other tluun the 
fashioning all the parts from nature, for the very ends which God designed 
for them ; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth, the 
teaching our affections to Ioto the highest good.**-^mold. 

LOVE. V 

I HATE 80 frequentlj expressed, and so constantlj 
assumed the necessity of love being the most essen- 
tial element in all home education worthy of the name, 
that I need not here at any length inculcate its 
value. 

Love is the sheet-anchor of education. It is God's 
grand argument, so to speak, in educating His own 
£Eimily. As love to Him is all in all, — the substance 
of obedience, and the source of joy, — so His love 
to us is the fountain of that light which is reflected 
from our hearts to Him again. In the possession 
of this affection, especially, is the parent God's image 
in the family. His power, influence, authority, must 
be loving. Chastisement may be necessary to establish 



HOME EDUCATION. 107 

outward authority and banish rebellion; but love is 
more so to obtain and maintain authoritj over the 
spirit, and to prevent rebellion. Love, so far from 
being inconsistent with inflexible firmness, is rather 
inseparable from it. For this sublime affection is 
not mere parental instinct, such as the lower animals 
manifest to their offspring ; nor is it wayward im- 
pulsive feeling. True love is God's love in us, 
and therefore one with holiness*, truth, and justice. 
When it is what may be termed an unprincipled or 
unwise affection, it will be manifested in every way 
most hurtful to the best interests of the family — ^by an 
easy self-indulgence, and a yielding to their wishes, 
whether right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable ; 
by partiality and favouritism, from senseless whim or 
caprice displayed to one or more members of the 
family, and giving rise to jealousies and evils which 
may last for Hfe. Such a temper as this is not love, 
but sheer selfishness, or a love of our own capricious 
likings and ill-regulated impulses, but not that holy 
self-sacrificing affection which seeks, above all things, 
the good, and by this the happiness, of its object. 
Hence the real good of, and real kve to, the child, can 
never be separated. The memorable description of 
iQve, given by Paul, should find its reality in that of a 
Christian parent, more, perhaps, than in any other heart 
on earth: — "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity 
envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed 
up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth 



108 HOME EDUCATION. 

not in iniqnity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth all 
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth 
all things." It is difficult to say which is the greater 
defect in a parent, — strictness and firmness in his 
family without feeling and affection; or, feeling and 
affection without strictness and firmness. Under the 
one bad system the children are apt to become slaves 
or hypocrites ; under the other, tyrants or rebels. But 
true love is always firm, and true firmness is always 
love. 

In speaking of the law of habit, I pointed out how 
no moral habit could be formed by a mere repetition 
of outward doings, without an inward liking to the 
things done. The oftener we are compelled to do 
what we dislike, the stronger does our dislike grow, 
until that dislike becomes itself a habit of ill-doing. 
On the other hand, the more we are led to love the 
right, and to do the right which we love, the more is 
the habit of good formed and strengthened. But how 
can this love of well-doing be kindled in the child by 
mere parental auikority^ without parental hvef And, 
as I have already noticed, it is doubtless owing to the 
absence of such love, that the children of many appar- 
ently good men have turned out ill. There may have 
been that parental fondness which was but an easy self- 
indulgence, or seeking to please the child at the expense 
of principle, and to make him happy through selfishness; 
or there were rules without number, and unbending 
firmness in carrying them out ; but the parent maiD- 
tained a stem distance from his children; his words 



HOME SDUCATIOK. 109 

were generally threats or commands; punishment 
never failed to follow transgression ; he was *^ a very 
Qtrict man," and '' not to be trifled with ;" yet there 
was the absence of that tenderness and attractiveness 
of love which kindles a ccxtresponding emotion in the 
child's bosom, and moves it to willing and cordial 
obedience, bringing not Ids outward acts only, but 
his inward spirit also into harmony with what is good. 
The bow. of obedience was bent by the external force 
of authority merely; do we wonder that when the 
force which bent it was removed, it should spring 
back tiolently in an opposite direction f Are we 
astonished that a child — terrified for his father's frown, 
and never gladdened by a father's love — ^when freed 
from all the outward restraint to which he was alone 
accustomed, and destitute of internal principle, which 
was never cultivated in him, should break loose in wild 
and reckless dissipation, and, like a stream which has 
burst the barriers that pent it up, rush along an im- 
petuous and desolating torrent? 

" If we would govern a child," says a late writer^ 
'^ and make a hero of him, we must meet him with 
simple love like his own, for then he will be a child at 
heart in sternest manhood, and hope, b^eve, and en- 
dure &om an indwelling consciousness that there is 
nothing to fear in God, except when we forget His love, 
and refuse to bring our cares and our sorrows to Him, 
and trust Him as the author of a mother's heart, the 
giver of that affection which drew us to its bosom, there 
to drink in lifC} there to conceal our tears, there to 



1 10 HOHB sducatiok; 

nestle in the warmth of hope, and faith, and charity, 
for all the graces are nurtured there. The parent 
must rule, and, if needs be, with the rod ; but still that 
rod should be as the sceptre of love, budding as with 
almond blossoms, to demonstrate that the power of 
God is kindness. The contrast, in personal appear- 
ance and manner, between a child trained under the 
winning management of a wise, firm, commanding 
love, and another subjected to the despotic control of 
fear, ifl verjr striking. In the former, we observe a 
sprightly eje and open countenance, with a genial 
vivacitj and trustfulness in the general expression of 
the body ; a mixture of confiding sociality with intelli- 
gence ; an idacrity of movement, and a healthiness of 
soul, evinced in generous activity and smiles. Even 
if the body be enfeebled, still a bright halo surrounds, 
so to speak, the mental constitution. But physical as 
well as intellectual vigour and enjoyment are usually 
the happy results of that freedom of heart and gener- 
osity of spirit which skilful affection endeavours to 
encourage. Then in youth and manhood, a noble 
intelligence confirms the propriety of such early train- 
ing ; but the child who finds a tyrant instead of a fos- 
tering parent, if naturally delicate, acquires a timid 
bearing, a languid gait, a sallow cheek, a' pouting lip, 
a stupid torpidity, or a suUen defiance; for nature's 
defence from tyranny is either hard stupidity or cun- 
ning daring. « If, then, we would know how 
to manage a little child, let us imagine how Jesus 
would have treated it. Would He not have engaged 



HOME EDUCATIOK. Ill 

its hapineet feelings and affections, won its heart, and 
blessed it f While sitting on His knee, would not the 
child have gazed into that ^ human face divine,' and 
learned the gentleness and power of its heavenly 
Father? • Piely itself is not nnfreqnentlj rend- 
ered terrible by a perverted application of memory 
to descriptions in which Omnipotence is associated 
with the final judgment and the terrors of guilt. 
Many a little child, whose susceptible heart is as ready 
to yield to the gentlest breath of affection as an aspen 
leaf to the zephyr, and whose spirit sparkles with love 
as the dew-drop to the light, acquires the habit of 
terror, and scarcely dares to look up, because he is 
taught as soon as he can speak to repeat-^ 

* There *8 not a sin that we commit, 

Nor wicked word we say. 
But in the dreadfol book 'tis writ 
Against the Judgment day.* 

And the thoughtless and fond parent too frequently 
makes that appear to be wickedness and sin which, 
however proper to childhood, is inconvenient to those 
who should tenderly train it. Surely that is a danger- 
ous expedient for the correction of a child conscious of 
having offended the only being he has learned to love, 
and while, perhaps in agony of heart, begging pardon 
from a mother, to be told to remember 

' There is a dreadftd hell 

And ererlasting piuns. 
Where sinners mnst for ever dwell 

In darkness, fire» and obains. 
And can a wretch as I ' 

Escape this cursed end/ &o., ftc. 



112 HOME EDUCATION. 

There ib reason to belieye that insane despondencj, 
and a disposition to commit suicide, may often be 
traced to abuse of religious discipline, if religious it may 
be called, especially that form of it just alluded to/'* 

I have already said that firmness is inseparable &om 
love. They so run into each other that they may be 
considered together, yet let me examine them separ- 
ately, and say a few words on 

FIRMNESS. 

Firmness is but steadfastness of purpose. It expresses 
in the godly parent the unchangeableness of truth, the 
permanence of principle, and the constancy of love. He 
owes it to himself — to his child — ^to God for whom he 
acts — to carry out all his lawful and righteous purposes. 
Let him be very careful what promises he makes to 
encourage his children ; what threats he holds out to 
warn them; or what commands he gives them to 
obey. Let him take heed lest he rashly acts, or 
speaks unadvisedly with his lips. He is dealing vnth 
an immortal soul ; immense interests are at stake, and 
he is responsible to God I But if he has, to the best 
of his judgment, adopted a certain course of procedure 
towards his child, that must he carried out. Self-will, 
accompanied not unfrequently , by stubbornness and 
obstinacy, I have already noticed as a characteristic of 
the fallen race of Adam from their earliest years. 
This must be met by firmness on the part of the 
parent. The parent's will must be supreme. To be 

• Potrer of the SouH. By G. Moore. P. 221. 



BOME BDUC AHON. 113 

subject to his child, and to yield to his wilfulness, how- 
ever expressed — ^whether by little cunning acts of out- 
ward kindness and flattery, or by violent fits of passion, 
persevered in almost to the danger of the child's 
health — ^is wickedness and rebellion against God. To 
give way to the will of the child, if the will of the 
parent is rights is a crime, a cruelty; and its evil 
consequences can hardly be exaggerated. Let a child 
once understand that a parent's word is unalterable by 
anything it can do or say, and every attempt to alter it 
will soon be given up. On the other hand, let a child 
gain the battle once, and he is, probably, a conqueror 
for life, and becomes a despot, who will rule father and 
mother with the rod which should have ruled himself. 
Oh! what cruel parente are those who are so fond, 
forsooth, of their children, as always to comply with 
their wishes ! Sorely, yet righteously, have such parents 
been punished in after years. 

I know that anything like corporal punishment is 
banished from many systems of modern education, as 
a remnant of a barbarous age. It is quite true that it 
is not unfrequently made a short substitute for those 
more laborious means of godly upbringing which I 
have been considering — for- it is much easier to punish 
a child daily for bad habits, than to train him up daily 
to good ones; and to visit the consequences of ill- 
doing by arbitrary stripes, rather than encourage well- 
doing by wise and holy love. Such punishment, how- 
ever, is often deserved much more by the undutiful 
parents than by the undutifol children. But not over- 



IH HOMB EDUCATION. 

looking the abuse of corporal pumshment^ we should 
also remember its use. Without at all advocatiDg 
it as a frequent means of establishing authority or 
punishing transgression, — naj, admitting that in many 
families and with many children it is unnecessary^ 
and that with all it should be the rare and the ]a&t 
resort, — yet let it not be excluded as if in every case 
unrighteous and unwise. ^^What son is he whom 
his father chasteneth nott" asks the apostle: and he 
recognises the lawfulness and value of such discipline 
when he says,-— ^ We have had Others of our flesh 
which corrected us, and we gave them reverence!" 
And when he adds, '^ shall we not much rather be 
in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" 
•—the principle on which chastisement should be 
administered is indirectly pointed out — ^that it should 
be like what our Father in heaven inflicts upon 
" every son whom He receiveth ;" which is indeed " a 
strange work,** not the rale, but the exception ; yet a 
work of love in its deepest working, when the ol:ject 
of love will be made to " endure chastening" " for his 
profit," because the loving Father will not endure in 
him any sin ; — when " a son" will be made a partaker 
of suffering, that he should thereby be made '< a par- 
taker of holiness." Such chastisement, not cruel and 
unrighteous, but wise and holy, administered with hate 
to the evil, and with love to the child, will prepare 
him to understand and receive that instruction which 
God may see fit to impart in after life by the dis- 
cipline of His rod. Hear what thdt Parent, whose 



HOXE EDUCATION. 115 

name is Love, has recorded in the Bible upon this 
form of correcting the young, — << Chasten thy son 
while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his 
crying.** "Withhold not correction from the child; f-* 
for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.** 
" Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver 
his soul from hell.'* " He that spareth the rod hateth 
his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.** 
To do all \h\s firmness is necessary. 

Having said so much upon this severer form of 
home education, to meet some cases which I cannot 
doubt would be greatly improved by its wise ad- 
ministration, I will conclude this paragraph by an 
extract from a writer already quoted, who incidentally 
touches in one of his volumes upon the same topic, 
and takes a milder view of family discipline than even 
Mrs. Wesley : — " Above all things," he says, ** make a 
child believe you, because he has reason to love you. 
* Let him feel and fear your authority, because you obey 
and are bound to obey God. Let him know who holds 
the absolute right to rule without being doubted, and 
that as Christ has commanded yon to train the child 
for Him, you do so because the source of power is the 
source of good. A child needs not much reasoning, he 
is convinced intuitively. Let him feel that you liave 
right, by feeling that you are right. Love itself may 
abuse power. Howard was, as a philanthropist, a 
blessing to the world, but as a father, however affec- 
tionate, he seems to have been unwise; a mistaken 
sense of duty caused him to pierce his own heart. He 



116 H03fB EDUCATION. 

thought At his duty to insist on obedience merely to the 
authority of parental power, instead of enforcing it by 
the attractiveness of fatherly feeling and consistency. 
Natural faith and affection are not blind, but will be 
able to distinguish their proper objects. He taught 
his child, while still an infant, not to cry, and never in 
all its childhood permitted it to have what it demanded 
with tears ! God forbid that we should be thus taught 
Our Father in heaven does not thus treat us. He ex- 
pects us to be in earnest. But, said Howard, the 
government of a being that cannot reason about the 
fitness of things, should be only coercive and in fear. 
He overlooked the discernment that is keener than rea- 
son; he forgot that the heart has to be educated as 
well as the head, and that it is ruled aright only so long 
as love is visible in power. A child that must always 
govern its feelings from fear of others, will soon be a 
hypocrite and a tyrant. When the fetters upon it are 
removed, the soul will rush into selfish extravagance, 
and, perhaps, perish ; like a bird from a cage, unfit to 
use its wings, and aiming only at pleasure, while in- 
capable of providing for its own wants. Thus How- 
ard's son was in in&ncy coerced, without fondness ; in 
youth commanded to be moral ; but in manhood he be- 
came debauched, and then mad. Even John Wesley 
would have driven little children to heaven with a 
scourge. ^ Break their wills betimes,' he says ; ' begin 
before they can run alone. Whatever pain it costs, 
break the will if you would not danm the child. Let 
a child from a year old be taught to &ar the rod and 



HOME EDUCATION. 117 

learn to cry softly ; from that age make him do as he 
is bid if yon whip him ten times/ A man that would 
attempt to educate a dog on such principles, would 
deserve to be indicted on the law against cruelty to 
animals. He also exhorts parents ' never to commend 
children for anything.* This is not like St. Paul's 
gospel, ' Provoke not your children to anger, lest they be 
discouraged* The nurture and admonition of the Lord 
is not the bastinado." * 

PERSEYEBANCE. 

Parents, more than any persons on earth engaged 
in the prosecution of arduous enterprises, should adopt 
as their motto, '* Never despair" Be not discouraged 
by slow progress, or by oft-repeated failures. Do not 
lose faith, and, in despondency, say, like the aged 
patriarch, '^ All these things are against me ;" nor 
ever cease to obey your Father in heaven, who bids 
you do what is right, although your children have 
ceased to obey their father on earth, and are doing 
what is wrong. ' Results are with God— duty with 
you. In no circumstance whatever are you entitled to 
hand over a child to Satan, saying, " I give my child 
to thee, I can do no more ; he is incorrigible — lost ! " 
As long as he is under the parental roof, you must, 
to the best of your ability, train him up ; and, when 
he leaves your roof, you mast still follow him, if 
possible, with your advices, and certainly with your 
prayers. Here, again, should a parent endeavour in 

• Man and kU MoHvet. By G. Moore. ^. 295. 



118 HOME EDUC ATJOX. 

his conduct towards his children to act aji God does 
towards himself; and how long-suffering and patient 
has the Lord been! Has He not borne with mani- 
fold shortcomings, provocations, and rebellions ; yearn- 
ing over us with a depth of compassion of which 
a mother's enduring love is but a faint reflection; 
crying, " How shall I give thee up, Israel ! '* ever 
wishing us to return, and promising, if we do so, to 
receive us graciously, love us freely, and heal all 
our backslidings. And thus, parents, must you in 
" patience possess your souls,'' and labour on with 
long-suffering and compassion ; trusting Grod ; seeking 
to save your dear children ; to " pluck them as 
brands from the burning;" to ^'stablish, strengthen, 
settle," and ''build them up in their most holy 
faith." Continue steadfastly, as they grow up in 
years, to train them up to godliness, " praying always, 
with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and 
watching thereunto with all persevet^anceJ" " In the 
morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold 
not thy hand," and be assured that "your labour shall 
not be in vain in the Lord." If you are " not weary in 
well-doing," then, certainly, " m due season jou will reap 
if you feint not." For the Lord hath said, " Train up 
a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
will not depart from it I** 

1 notice once more, briefly, that parents should train 
up their children with 



HOME BDUGATIOK. 119 



WATCHFULNESS. 



This is required to know the character of the child, 

and its peculiar tendencies and difficulties, so as to train 

it up wisely. A timid gentle cliild requires a diffidrent 

treatment from a bold impetuous one,— the open and 

candid, from the shut-up and cunning. Altered cir- 

cumstauces, such as going from country to town, or 

from the nursery to school ; the choice of companions; 

increasing years, and with them new duties, new 

trials, new temptations ; — all require watchfulness on 

the parents' part, so as to know and* to meet the 

child's varied necessities. Watchfalness is necessary 

also for the detection of evil habits, in their first 

beginnings, when they are more easily checked ; and . 

for the perception, too, of that growth in grace for 

which Uie parent labours and prays, and which, when 

perceived, will be at once a reward for the past, and 

a blessed encouragement to persevere for the future. 

There is no reason, however, why this careful scrutiny 

upon the parents' part should be known directly by 

the child, but every reason why it should be concealed, 

that it may not act as an unwholesome and unnatural 

restraint* 



120 



CHAPTER IX. 

PBATEB. 

*' Ask, and it shall be given yon ; -seek, and ye shall find : knock, and it 
shall be opened unto yon : for every one that aaketh receiveth ; and he that 
seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh» it shall be opened. Or what 
man is there of yon, whom, if hi« son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If tk thek, beikg xtil. 

Know BOW TO OITE GOOD GIFTS UHTO TOCB CHILDRBK, HOW HCCH HOKE SBALL 
ruUB FaTHES which is IM HKAVBN GIYB good things to TBEH TeAT ASK 
BlH?" 

I MENTION prayer last, because without it all other 
means of education are mere dead instrumentalities, in 
so far as the grand end is concerned, — that of training 
the young for heaven and for God, 

Prayer is an acknowledgment of the absolute de- 
pendence of parent and child upon the aid and bless- 
ing of that eternal Spirit without whom neither can 
be children of God, nor the one train nor the other be 
trained in the way to glory. 

It is impossible for a parent to feel habitually 
enough, or to acknowledge with an adequate sense 
of its truth, how all his plans and efforts, in order 
to be successful, must be formed and carried out in 
humble and constant childlike reliance upon God's 
Holy Spirit. Without this he has no good ground 
for hoping that his home education, however other- 



HOME EDUCATION. 121 

wise apparently efficient, will not utterly fail, and 
all his fondest anticipations be blasted. <' Without 
me," saith our Lord, "ye can do nothmgy* — a truth 
never to be forgotten by the Christian parent, which he 
indeed acknowledges every time he bows his knees 
in prayer, but practically denies when he neglects to 
do so — assuming rather that be can, by his own un- 
aided wisdom and power, train up his family for 
heayen. Oh I parents, do not attempt anything so 
wicked, and what, unless God prevent, must prove so 
disastrous in the end! You cannot sav/a your own 
souls, far less the souls of your children ! " The 
Spirit of Life which is in Christ Jesus " alone can do 
both. Surely to train up your children to be lUce Jesm 
Christ requires the constant aid of Him whose very 
work it is to renew us in the spirit of our minds, and 
to make us " conformable to His Son.'^ But, on the 
other hand, with the promise, " to them who ask Him," 
of the Holy Spirit to convince, enlighten, renew, sanc- 
tify, strengthen, with what hope and joy may not 
parents labour in the work of home education — ^for 
they are then fellow- workers with God! 
Let me remark more particularly that — 
1. Parents ahoitld 'pray for themselves. The prayer 
" without ceasing," is the life without ceasing of that 
holy influence I have already spoken of, which is 
unconsciously exercised in mind, look, and action, 
and which tdls upon the family, like the gladdening 
and quickening light and heat of the sun upon the 
green earth. From personal intercourse with God it 



122 HOME EDUCATION. 

is alone possible to sustain the sublime position of 
being God's representative in the household. To be 
in any degree "like Grod," or "renewed after His 
image," requires, indeed, omnipotent grace. But om- 
nipotent, all-sufficient grace, is ours ; and ours daily, 
hourly, if we seek it in faith. 

But not only is this sanctity of character in the 
parent maintained by prayer, and with it all those 
graces of patience, meekness, fortitude, persever- 
ance, self-denial, love, ^c, which play such a part 
in the work of home education, but there is also 
obtained from God that special " wisdom from above " 
which he who guides a family so much requires, 
amidst the trials, temptations, and duties of everj' 
day life, and more particularly in those critical 
periods which occur in a family's history, when the 
advice given, or the decision come to, or even the 
temper and disposition manifested by the parent, may 
involve the good and happiness of a beloved child, not 
for time only, but also for eternity ! Oh ! the blessed- 
ness of knowing God in such seasons, as One who will 
surely guide us by His counsel, and instruct us in the 
way we should go ! 

2. Parents should prca/ for their children. They 
should, in their own private devotions, mention 
them by name to God, confessing to Him that sin- 
fulness and those sins in them which are so much 
bound up in the sinfulness and sins of the parent ; 
spreading before God all their cares and anxieties 
about them, and leaving these at the footstool of 



BOUB EDUCATIOK. 123 

His throne of grace ; asking also from God such things 
as they need for body and soul ; and, in one word, as 
regards their children, << being careful for nothing, but 
m everything making their requests known by prayer 
and supplication with thanksgiving; and then the 
peace of God which passeih und^:«tandang will ke^ 
their hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." 

And how many encouragements have parents, both 
from the promises and examples contained in the Word 
of God, for thus praying in &ith and faqae I 

The very name "Father," wilh which, in "the 
spirit of adoption," they are privileged to address 
God, carries with it, as I have noticed more fully in 
a previous chapter, an argument for believing prayer 
to every parent's heart, and contains in it the pro- 
mise of every needful blessing. • 

Most strengthening, also, to his faith, are those 
instances recorded in the New Testament, of parents 
interceding with Christ for their children, and never 
doing so in vain : such as when the afflicted Jairus 
besought Him for "an only daughter, twelve years 
old, who lay a-dying;" and the woman of Canaan 
pled with Him for her "daughter grievously vexed 
with a devil;" and the afflicted &ther in anguish 
cried, " I beseech Thee, look upon my eon, for he is 
mine only child I " In all such cases our Lord heard 
and answered parental prayer. When even the disciples 
would keep back those mothers who brought their babes 
to Him, He who, as tj^e Good Shepherd, " carries the 
lambs in His bosom," gladly received the infants "into 



124 HOtfE EDUCATION. 

His arms, and blessed them.'' How comforting are 
sach instances of a Saviour's sympathy with a parent's 
love and care ! Nay^ that 83rmpathy often anticipated 
prayer, and was promptly shewn when all hope had per- 
ished, giving exceeding abundantly above all the needy 
could ask or think — as when He raised the widow's 
son at the gate of Nain, and " delivered him to his 
mother." This SavioHr is unchanged. - He is the 
same now as then. By His life on earth we are 
enabled to know ^^ the Ever Living I " Though He 
may not work miracles now in behalf of children 
which the fleshly eye can discover, He can, before 
the eye of faith, that has '^ watched unto prayer 
with all perseverance," do <^ greater works than these, 
that we may marvel." He can enlighten the blind 
mind; cast out the unclean devil £rom the defiled 
soul ; heal the sick and wounded spirit ; give life from 
the very dead; and restore a child to its mother, 
when, in almost despair, she looks for nothing but 
that moral and total corruption which makes her ex- 
claim, '' Trouble not the Master I" • Let parents ''only 
believe," and bring their children to Christ himself^ 
assured that He is as really present now as then, 
to hear and answer such prayers as those ! 

Prayer has one advantage which is not possessed 
by any of the other means of home education which I 
have specified. It is powerful in absence ! — where 
precept may not reach, nor example be afforded. In 
the silent hours of night, when^all the house is lying 
still, and every babe wrapped in unconscious repose, 



HOME EDUCATION. 125 

parents may lift their wakefal hearts to Him who 
slumbereth not nor sleepeth, in behalf of their 
beloved offspring, — the very silence around them 
sending their thoughts to the family resting-place in 
the churchyard; and the hopes of the coming day, 
to the family resurrection on the last morning; all 
prompting the earnest prayer that the rest may be 
a sleeping together in Jesus, and the waking a 
living together with Him ! But the children leave 
the parental roof. The fireside group is scattered 
to distant shores. One becomes a soldier, fighting 
amidst the din of battle ; another a sailor boy, voy- 
aging over the boisterous deep; or an emigrant, 
labouring in a distant colony; or a merchant, buy- 
ing and selling amidst the temptations of a great 
city. But wherever they are, and in whatever cir- 
cumstances, still for them the earnest prayer may 
ascend at home, and be heard and answered by 
that Father who is everywhere a present help I 
Not until the revelation of the great day will child- 
ren or parents be able to discover the connexion 
which Grod thus established between the blessings 
received by the one, and the prayer offered up by 
the other ! That sudden gleam of light, for instance, 
which, in a distant land, breaks in, he knows not how, 
upon the young man's soul, amidst the gathering dark- 
ness of evil passion or unbelief; those gracious visitings 
to his parched heart, refreshing and quickening as 
morning dew; this deliverance from danger or tempta- 
tioa; that singular providence which has affected his 



126 HOME EDUCATION. 

whole life ; those pious acquaintanceships^ formed appar- 
entlj bj accident, but which have so much helped to 
'bring him to God, and keep him in the path of right- 
eousness; these unnumbered comforts of sanctified 
affliction which soothed, even amidst strangers, \m 
bed of suffering : — oh ! how many such blessings may 
be sent to the absent child from a gracious God, in 
answer to the prayers poured forth by His aged 
servants in their deserted home ! A true prayer never 
dies. It lives before God when the mortal lips which 
gave it utterance are silent in the grave. 

3. Parents should pray withf as weU as for^ theo' 
children. There are occasions when many Christian 
parents make it a rule to bring their child alone with 
themselves into the presence of God ; as, for example, 
when a peculiarly serious admonition has been given ; 
or a grave offence committed; or chastisement ad- 
ministered ; or the child is about to enter into some 
new circumstances, involving new duties and trials, 
— at such times as these, it must indeed impress 
his heart to kneel beside a parent at a throne of 
grace ; to hear, from a parent's lips, his sins confessed, 
and his whole wants and circumstances spread out 
before God. How calculated is this to make him 
feel his personal responsibility to Gody and not to his 
parent only — to make him sympathize with a parent's 
difficulties and anxieties — ^realize the vast importance 
of his words and actions — ^and recognise God as a 
living God, who is ever present, seeing the evil and the* 
good, and ready to visit iniquity with stripes, and to 



HOME EDUCATION. 127 

grant mercy to pardon, and grace to help in the time 
of need ! 

4. Parents should pray with their children in united 
family prayer.* This is the main support of family 
religion. In this exercise, more than in any other, 
the piety and simplicity of patriarchal times survive, 
when the parent, as the priest, offers up, amidst his 
children and domestics, the morning and evening 
sacrifice of prayer and praise. Then, if ever, is there 
impressed upon the hearts of parents and children, 
masters and servants, a sense of common responsibility 
to God for ^e discharge of their relative duties. Then 
are those mercies acknowledged which the family 
enjoy — ^those things asked which the family require — 
those sins confessed of which the family are guilty-^ 
and that outpouring of the Spirit of holiness and love 
obtained, in the possession of which the family of 
earth becomes one with the family in heaven. I 
would earnestly urge upon all parents the immense im- 
portance of family prayer. The members of a work- 
ing man's family especially, have seldom a place in his 
small house where they can each retire for private 
doYOtion. If an opportunity is not afforded by family 
prayer for reading the Bible, and kneeling at a throne 
of grace, the temptations to omit such exercises are so 
great, that few have the principle and fortitude to 
resist them. I can here do little more than touch 
upon this duty; yet, let me ask, why is it so much 

• See the excellent " Directory for Family Worship*' appended to the 
ConfeMlon oC Faith. 



128 HOME EDUCATION. 

neglected? Why is this family link so often wantonly 
broken ? 

Is it from want of timet Surely one half-hour — 
one quarter even — in the twenty-four, may be snatched 
&om the time required to labour for the body, in order 
to " labour together in prayer " for the souL " What 
will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul!" ^^ Labour not for the meat that 
perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life ever- 
lasting." '^Seek first the kingdom of God, and all 
these things shall be added unto you." But how can 
want of timiB be pleaded by those who never worship 
with their i^tmilies even on Sabbath ? Is it, then, from 
want of abUitif to pray ? Often are such excuses heard 
as: — "We have not the gift;" "we could not find 
words." Yet those who make such excuses seldom 
lose any earthly benefit from want of words wherewith 
to ask it. How accurately do men remember things 
in which they feel interested ; and how full of words 
are they, when arguing or pleading for fortune, or life, 
or anything which they esteem a great good ! There 
is not an old woman in the country, who will not 
narrate the most intricate story about a legacy she 
expects, or who will not tell that story well before a 
crowded court, if she hopes, by so doing, to gain her 
case ! And so would it be in prayer to God, if people 
had as much heart in seeking spiritual, as in seeking 
temporal things. " Blessed are they who hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, for thei/ shall be filled." 
" Thou hast filled the needi/ with good things, but the 



HOME EDUC^^TION. 129 

rich thou hast sent empty away." Bemember, it is 
neither long prayers, far less 'learned'' prayers, that 
the Lord desires. Prayer is the language of the heart 
What is essential to it is to " believe that God is, and 
that He is the rewarder of all who diligently seek 
Him/' Peter offered up a prayer having only three 
words, — '* Lord, save me 1" It was sufficient. Be only 
as sincere and believing as he was, and you will find it 
very difficult, were it even necessary, to be as short. 
Begin by asking the Spirit of prayer to teach you how 
to pray, (Bom. viii. 26.) Then tell God the mereUs 
you have received from Him— for your body and soul 
— ^for yourself and family. When you cannot re- 
member another mercy, pass to your mm^ land spread 
them out as they come to your mind. Having con- 
fessed these, make your request known to Him, asking 
such things as you and your fimily really stand in 
need of, and as Grod has promised to give, for time 
and for eternity. Your friends, neighbours, the world, 
and the €hurch of Christ, might also be remembered. 
Try to do this, and I think you will find that you 
have more to say at a throne of grace than you were 
aware of. 

But should you still be afraid to express yourself in 
words before the frunily, and if you really wish to do 
your duty, you may begin by reading a portion of the 
Word of God, or making your children do 4S0 ; then 
kneel down and repeat the Lord's Prayer, or read any 
other form of prayer suited to a fruaily. Even when 
a parent cannot read, or has not got over the 



130 HOME. BBUO ATIOK* 

difficulty of expressing himself in prayer, I would 
recommend, tliat after kneeling down, solemn silence 
should be maintained for a few minutes, until each 
person has had an opportunity of praying. The 
Lord's Prayer might then be repeated aloud by the 
head of the house, as a conclusion to the deyotions. 
I am persuaded, that unless some arrangement like 
this is adopted, prayer will be entirely banished from 
the family. And where is the working man who 
cannot do so, if he is in earnest^ and resolves, like 
Joshua, that he and his house should serre the Lord ? 
Beware of incurring the condemnation pronounced 
(Luke xii. 47) on the servant who neither did, nor 
prepared himself to do, his Lord's will. For in this^ 
as in every other incumbent duty, the proverb holds 
true, " Where . there is a will, there is a way.** 
Any man who wishes to worship God in his family, 
will soon find means of doing so. I have known 
&uuily-worship kept up by the widow of a working 
man, and by the eldest son when only fourteen years 
of age. I have known a poor bed-ridden paralytic 
parent assemble his children for years around him, 
causing them daily to read aloud God's Word, and to 
repeat aloud the Lord's Prayer, while he added a few 
words of his own. After his death his sons and daugh- 
ters, each in their own households, followed his pious 
example. I fear, however, that many of those who 
urge one excuse after another for their neglect of secret 
or family prayer, really dislike the duty, because they 
dislike God. Their daily walk before their family is 



BOMB EDUCATIOK. 131 

inconsistent with such a profession of religion ; and so 

thej rather give up religion itself and its profession, 

than give ap their sins. They prefer being consistently 

bad to being consistently good. Or they are <* ashamed 

of Christ;" and so He will be ashamed of them. 

Parents I if yon would banish Satan from your 

households, and with him all the train of sins that 

bring misery and desolation into many a home, and 

convert into a wilderness with wild beasts, what 

might be a family paradise, where every human afiec* 

lion bloomed in beauty, grew in grace, and brought 

forth fruit to Grod's glory— seek the constant presence 

of Jesus Christ ; and covet, above all earthly honoui; or 

renown, that your family should be like that one of old 

in Bethany, which ** Jesus loved.'* His presence will 

be your true prosperity ; making your daily mercies 

true mercies, and your seasons of bereavement seasons 

of richest blessing and deepest peace. Jesus will be 

the living bond of family union in life ; the rod and 

staff of each, as he successively joumies through th^ 

valley of death ; and your comquon life and joy for 

everl 

And what can be more soothing to a parent, when 
he is about to be removed from his children by death, 
or when they are scattered over the wide world never 
more to meet together around the family altar, than the 
memory of those holy times when " prayer was wont 
to be made" in the once united and happy home? 
On the other hand, how bitter is the memory of such 
opportunities ne^ected ! Many a parent would gladly 



182 HOME BDUCATIOK. 

give up what might yet remain of his life, could he only 
Fecal from the grave, and bring beside him in earnest 
prayer, those dear children with whom he never wor- 
shipped, because he was too slothful, too prou^ too 
procrastinating, or too godless to do so. I shall never 
forget the bitter anguish with which a working man, 
many years ago, announced ' to me the unexpected 
death of his only child, an interesting girl of fifteen 
years of age :r—'^ She is gone! and oh, sir, there is 
one thing for which I shall not forgive myself, though 
I hope God may yet in mercy forgive me — she never 
heard a prayer from my lips, nor from beneath my 
roofl" 



Having thus said all I intended upon the end and 
the means of Home Education, I shall conclude this 
portion of my subject by a quotation from the wise 
and graceful pen of Mr, Tupper. Those who are 
familiar with his Proverbial Philosophy will pardon me; 
those who know it not will thank me for the passage. 

A babe in a house ia a well, spring of pleasure, a messenger of i>eace and 

love s 
A resting place for Snnocenoe on earth ; a link between angds and men : 
Yet is it a talent of trust, a loan to be rendered back with interest ; 
A delight, but redolent of care ; honey, sweet, but lacking not the bitter. 
For character groweth day by day. and all things aid it in unfolding. 
And the bent unto good or evil may be given in the hours of infancy : 
Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil. 
The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to oome s 



HOME EDUCATION. 133 

Even BO majBt thou guide the mind to good, or lead it to the marrings of 

evil. 
For dispoeition is builded up by the fashioning of first impressions : 
Wherefore, though the roice of Instruction waiteth for the ear of Reason, 
Tet with bis mother's milk the young child. drinketh Education. 
Patience is the first great lesson ; he may learn it at the breast ; 
And tm habit of obedience and trust may be grafted on his mind in the 

cradle: 
Hold the little hands in prayer, teach the weak knees their kneeling; 
Let him see thee speaking to thy Ood ; he will not forget it afterward : 
When old and grey will he feelingly remember a motber*8 tender piety, 
And the touching recollection of her prayers shall arrest the strong man 

in. his sin. 
Select not to nurse thy darling one that may taint his innocence, 
For example is a constant monitor, and good seed will die among the tares. 
The arts of a strange servant have spoiled a gentle disposition : 
Mother, let him learn of thy lips, and be nourished at thy breast. 
Character is mainly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it ; 
Let then the playmates of thy Uttie one be not other than thy judgment 

shall approve : 
For a child is in a new world, and leameth somewhat every moment. 
His eye is quick to observe, his memory storeth in secret. 
His ear is greedy of knowledge, and his mind is plastic as soft wax. 
Beware then that he heareth what is good, that he feedeth not on evil 

maxims, 
For the seeds of first instructions are dropt into the deepest fhrrows. 
That which immemorial use hath sanctioned, seemeth to be right and true t 
Therefore, let him never have to recollect the time when good things were 

strangers to his thought. 
Strive not to centre in thyself, fond mother, all his love ; 
Nay, do not thou so selfishly, but enlarge his heart for others ; 
Use him to sympathy betimes, that he learn to be sad with the aMcted ; 
And check not a child in his merriment,— should not his morning be 

sunny ? 
Give him not all his desire, so shalt thou strengthen him in hope ; 
Neither stop with indulgence the fountain of his tears, so shall he fear thy 

firmness. 
Above all things graft on him subjection, yea in the veriest trifle ; 
Courtesy to all, reverence to some, and to thee unanswering obedience. 
Read thou first, and well approve, the books thou givest to thy child ; 
But remember the weakness of his thought, and that wisdom for him must 

be diluted t 
In the honied waters of infant tales, let him taste the strong wine of truth : 
Pathetic stories soften the heart; but legends of terror breed midnight 
misery ; 



134 HOME EDUCATION. 

Fairy fictions cram the mind ^th folly, and knowledge of eyil tempteth to 
like evil : 

Be not loeth to cnrb imagination, nor be fearfiilthat tmfha will depre^a it ; 

And for evil, he will learn it Boon enough ; be not thou the devil's envoy. 

Induce not precocity of intellect, for so shouldst thou nourish vanity ; 

Neither can a plant, forced in the hot-bed, stand against the i^osen breath 
of winter. 

The mind is made wealthy by ideas, but the multitude of words Is a clog- 
ging weight : 

Therefore be nndorstood in thy teaching, and instrnet to the measure of 
capacity. 

Analogy is milk for babes, but abstract truths are strong meat ; 

Precepts and rules are repulsive to a child, but happy illustration wtnneth 
him: 

In vain shatt thou preaefa of industry and prudence, till he team of the bee 
and the ant ; 

Dimly will he think of his soul, till the acorn and the chrysalis have taught 
him; 

He will fear God in thunder, and -v^orehip His loveliness in flowers ; 

And parable shall charm his heart, while doctrines seem dead mystery; 

Faith shall he learn of the husbandman casting good com into the soil; 

And if thou train him to trust thee, he will not withhold his reliance from 
the Lord« 

Fearest thou the dark, poor child? I would not have thee left to thy ter- 
rors; 

Darkness is the semblance of evil, and nature regardeth it with dread : 

Tet know thy fkther*B God is with tbee still, to guard thee : 

It is a simple lesson of dependence; let thy tost mind anchor upon Him. 

Did a sadden noise afiright thee ? lo, this or that hath caused it : 

Things undefined are ftdl of dread, and stagger stouter nerves. 

The seeds of misery and madness have been sowed in the nights of infancy ; 

Therefore be careful that ghastly fears be not the night companiona of 
thy child. 

Lo, thou art a land-mark on a hill ; thy little ones copy thee in all things ; 

Let, then, thy religion be perfect : so shalt thou be honoured in thy house. 

Be instructed in all wisdom, and communicate that thou knowest. 

Otherwise thy learning is hidden, and thus thou seemest unwise. 

A sluggard hath no respect; an epicure commandeth not reverence : 

Meanness is always despicable, and foUy provoketh contempt. 

Those parents are best honoured whose characters best deserve it; 

Show me a child undutiful, I shall know where to look for a foolish father : 

Never hath a father done his duty, and lived to be despised of his son. 

But how can that son reverence an example he dare not follow? 

Should he imitate thee in thine evil } his scorn is thy rebuke. 

Nay, but bring him up aright, in obedience to God and to thee; 



HOME EDUCATION. 185 

Begin betimas, lest thoa fkU of his feer ; and with Jadgment, that thou 

lose not his love : 
Herein use good discretion, and gorem not all alike, 
Tet, i>erhaps, the &ult will be in thee, if kindness prore not all sufficient ; 
By kindness, the wolf and the aebra become docile as the sjwniel and the 

hone; 
The kite feedeth with the starling, under the law of kindness : 
That law shall tame the fiercest, bring down the battlements of pride, 
C9ierish the weak, control the strong, and win the fearful spirit. 
Be obeyed when thou oommandest : but command not often : 
Let thy carriage be the gentleness of lore, not the stern front of tyranny. 
Make not one child a warning to another; but chide the offender apart : 
For self-conceit and wounded pride rankle like poisons in the souL 
A mild rebuke in the season of calmness, is better than a rod in the heat 

of passion, 
KeTertheless, spare not, if thy word hath passed for punishment; 
Let not thy child see thee humbled, nor learn to think thee fidse ; 
Sufiisr none to reprove thee before him, and reprove not thine own pur- 
poses by change ; 
Tet speedily turn thou again, and reward him where thou canst. 
For kind encouragement in good cutteth at the roots of eviL 
When his reason yieldeth fruit, make thy child thy friend ; 
For a filial friend is a double gain, a diamond set in gold. 
As an infimt, thy mandate was enough, but now let him see thy reasons ; 
Confide in him, but with discretien : and bend a wilMng ear to his ques- 
tions. 
More to thee than to all beside, let him owe good counsel and good guid- 
ance; 
Let him feel his pursuits hare an interest, more to thee than to all beside. 
Watch his native capacities : nourish that which suU^th him the readiest; 
And cultivate early those good inclinations wherein thou fearest he is most 

lacking; 
Is he phlegmatic and desponding ? let small successes comfort his hope t 
Is he obstinate and sanguine? let petty crosses accustom him to life : 
Showeth he a sordid spirit ? be quick, and teach him generosity ; 
Indineth he to liberal excess? prove to him how hard it is to earn. 
Gather to thy hearth such friends as are worthy of honour and attention t 
For the company a man chooseth is a visible index of his heart : 
But let not the pastor whom thou hearest be too much a fitmHiar in thy 

house, 
For thy children may see his Infirmities, and leam to cavil at his teaching . 
It is well to take hold on occasions, and render indirect instruction; 
It is better to teach upon a system, and reap the wisdom of books : 
The history of nations yieldeth grand outlmes : of persons, minute 
details: 



136 HOME BDUOATION. 

Poetry i« polifh to the mind, end high abstractions clcaose it. 

Consider the station of thy son, and breed him to his fortune with jndg. 

ment: 
The rieh may profit in much which would bring small advantage to the 

poor. 
But with all thy care for thy son, with all thy striyings for his welfare, 
Expect disappointment, and look for pain; for he is of an «yil stock, and 

will grieye tliee. 



187 



CHAPTER X. 

RESULTS. 

EKCOUBAOEMENTS TO OHBISTIAN FABSNTS — ^DIFFI- 
CULTIES AND OBJECTIONS — CONCLUSIOK. 

*' Train np a child in the way he should go, 
and WHEN BB IS old hb will not dbpabt ritox it.** 

Do these words — so often quoted as the weighty text 
o£ all mj remarks— express a law in God's orderly 
kingdom, upon the steady operation of which a parent 
may rely with perfect confidence T Are we warranted 
in looking for piety in after years as the result of 
Christian training in youth, with the same calm 
assiarance in the plan of God's providence which, in 
spite of certain variations, inspires the hope of reaping 
a good crop in autumn, from a field which has been 
sown with good seed, and tilled by a wise husbandry 
in spring? In one word, is it possible to train up 
children so that, as a rule, they shall grow up Christ- 
ians? 

There are pious parents who may be disposed, per- 
haps, to answer these questions in the negative, though 
what their views actually are as to the connexion 



138 HOME EDUOATIOK. 

established by God between a training in the way 
when young, and a walking in the same way when 
old, it might be hazardous in me to define, lest I 
should misinterpret what others believe, or be misin- 
terpreted in what I believe myself. But as far as I 
have been able to gather from conversation the views 
held by many upon this very important point, thej 
may be thus expressed :— '^ It is, doubtless, the duty 
and privilege of Christian parents to train up their 
children in the way they should go, but it by no means 
follows, as a general rule, that they will therefore walk 
in this way either in youth or in old age, because to 
do so implies conversion. Now, conversion can take 
place only when they are old enough to understand 
and believe the Gospel. Besides, it is not dependent 
on education, or anything man can do, but solely on 
the sovereignty of God, who gives or withholds His 
grace as He pleases. While, therefore, our duty as 
parents is dear, results are with God ; and what these 
shall be no one can predict, for no one can know the 
hidden counsels of the Most High, or read the names 
written from eternity in the Lamb's book of life.'' If 
this at all expresses, however imperfectly, the convic- 
tions or opinions with which any parent engages in 
the work of home education, I do not wonder that 
it should be sad and spiritless, because, as regards 
results, it is necessarily so very uncertain and hope- 
less ; for how can we labour with good-will unless we 
can do so in the faith that we are not alone, hut /ellow' 
labourers with God ! 






HOME EDUCATION. 189 

Now, we know indeed, and rejoice in believing, 
that all true life, all tliat is according to God's 
will, whether in youth or in old age, in the child 
or in the patriarch, must proceed from the grace of 
God ; that unless born again, and our corrupt nature 
regenerated by His Spirit, we cannot be His ^'dear 
children;" and that, in bestowing His gifts. He 
does what seemeth good to himself. But the ques- 
tion still remains, whether God has not been pleased 
to establish in His moral, as well as in His physical 
kingdom, such an orderly arrangement, that certain 
things follow other things according to laws discover- 
able by us, on which we are entitled to rely, and of 
which we can take such advantage as shall secure to 
us wished-for blessings f In the physical world, cer- 
tainly our heavenly Master does not give His servants 
^< labour in vain*' to execute. The husbandman is 
not appointed to sow his seed at a venture. In 
spite of bad seasons and occasional disappointment, 
he knows he can still rely upon God's beautiful and 
orderly plan, secured to him by promise, that " as long 
as the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and 
heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not 
cease;'* and, accordingly, being sure to reap in due 
season, if he faints not, he '* waits for the precious 
fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until 
he receive the early and the latter rain." And is the 
Christian panent doomed to labour in vain in the 
spiritual kingdom when engaged in the nobler work 
of training up his children ? Must he wait hopelessly 




140 HOHB EDUCATION. 

and despondinglj for the precious fruit — ^precious in 
the sight of God — ^from what he has sown in his child's 
soul with many prayers and tears t Shall he never 
receive the early or the latter rain, and is his long 
patience in waiting only presumption in hoping ? Im- 
possible! They who best know GU>d and His ways 
will most recoil from such views of His fatherly 
love and wisdom! There are laws i!i the moral as 
well as in the physical world, and more fixed and 
unalterable, too, because based upon what is morally 
fitting and eternally right : — ^and this is God's general 
law affecting education : ^' Train up a child in the 
way he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it," 

And surely such a text as this assumes, as a matter 
of fact, that a child may, from infancy to old age, walk 
in the way it should go ? There is no interval of time, 
not a year or month, allowed for its walking in any 
other way -than the right one. The words do not 
mean anything like this : *' Train up your child as you 
best can ; yet remember that for years it will, as a 
matter of course, walk in the way it should not go, 
remain dead in sin, and a child of wrath, though per- 
haps it may be converted in manhood, and at last enter 
upon that right path which will not be departed from 
in old age." On the contrary, the words imply that 
the child may and ought to be so trained as that he 
will walk in the right way all his lifft Thus, too, 
when the apostle says, " Fathers, bring up your child- 
ren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," does 



HOME EDUCATION. 141 

he not also assume that their children may, in their 
earliest as well as in their riper years be, "in. the 
Lord," and receive His nurture 1 

That children, £rom their infancy, may possess God's 
Spirit, and grow up as trees of righteousness, the 
planting of the Lord ; and that Christian parents are 
entitled to look for what they cannot but earnestly 
desire, is, moreoyer, implied in the ordinance of bap- 
tism. That rite is administered to the children of 
believing parents ; it is to them the sign and seal of the 
precious promise made to the &unilies of God's people 
ever since it was first made to Abraham, viz., that 
He will be their God, and they shall be His people. 
"By the right use of this ordinance," says the Con- 
fession of Faith, "the grace promised is not only 
offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy 
Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace 
belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own 
will, and in His appointed time." And does not every 
parent, who knows the relationship of himself and his 
offspring to the covenant God, rejoice in this promise, 
and lay hold of it, and plead it, praying that his 
child may enjoy the spiritual blessings of the covenant 
of grace from its birth, and be sanctified, like John the 
Baptist, from its mother's womb ? And what parent 
would be satisfied with a measure of good less than, 
this, or experience any other feeling than that of deep- 
est sorrow, if he thought his beloved child was doomed 
to remain unconverted for some years, and to be under 
the curse, vnthout God or Christ in the world I 



142 HOMB BDUCATIOK. 

But I do not think any Christian parent believes 
thies bat, on the contrary, assumes, and acts upon the 
assumption, that if he really trains up his child in the 
way it should go, God will so bless his efforts that 
when ^^ old he will not depart £rom it." 

"Ungodly parents," says Baxter, "do serve the 
devil so effectnally in the first impressions on their 
children's minds, that it is more than magistrates, and 
ministers, and aU reforming means can afterwards do, 
to recovo: them from that sin to God. Whereas, if 
you would first engage their hearts to God by a reli- 
gious education, piety would then hxw all those advan*- 
tagee that sm hath now. The language wMch you teach 
them to^speak when they are children, they will use aB 
their life after, if they live with those that use it. And 
so the opinions which they first receive, and the customs 
which they are used to at first, are very hardly changed 
afterward. I doubt not to affirm, that a godl^ educor 
turn is God^s fint and ordinary appointed means for the 
begetting of actual faith and other graces in the children of 
heUevers. Many may have seminal grace before, but 
they cannot sooner have actual faith, repentance, love, 
or any grace, than they have reason itself in act and 
exercise. And the preaching of the Word by public 
ministers is not the first ordinary means of grace to 
any but those that are graceless till they come to hear 
such preaching; that is, to those on whom the fijrst 
appointed means hath been neglected or proved in 
vain ; that is, it is but the second means to do that 
which was not done by the first. The proof is luideni- 



HOXB EDUCATION. 143 

able, because God appointetb parents diligentlj to 
teach their children the doctrine of His holy Word 
before thej come to the pabhc ministry. Parents' 
teaching is the first teachings and parents' teaching is 
for this end, as well as public teaching, even to beget 
faith, love, and holiness. And Qod appoimteth no means 
to he used hyuaan whkh we may not expect Hie hUemg. 
Therefore, it is apparent that the ordinary appointed 
means fir the first actual grace is parental godly instruction 
and education of their children. And public preaching 
is appointed for the conversioB of those only that have 
missed the blessing of the first appointed means. 
Therefore, if you deny your children religious educa* 
tion, you deny them the first appointed means of their 
actual faith and sanctification, and then the second 
cometh upon disadvantage.''* 

Dwight remarks : ^^ If we train up our children in 
the way th^ should go, they will enter it almost of 
course^ fiUow us to heaven^ and be awr conyxmions fir 

Jonathajl'^Eklwards says that ** family education and 
order are some of the chief means of grace. If these 
fiul, all other means are likely to proye ineffectual." 

An eloquent American writer, already quoted, re- 
marks: — "The aim, effort, and expectation of the 
parent should be, not, as is commonly assumed, that 
the child is to grow up in sin, to be converted after 
he comes to a mature age: but that he is to open 

• Christian Economies, chap, vi , p 1C9. (Vol*IV , 8to.) 

4 Herman czlrlii. f 



144 HOME educahon. 

on the world as one that is spiritually r^ewed, not 
remembering the time when he went through a tech- 
nical experience, but seeming rather to have loved what 
is good from his earliest years. * You will never 
practically aim at what you practically despair o^ and 
if you do not practically aim .to unite your child to 
God, you will aim at something less, that is, something 
unchristian, wrong, sinfuL * What opinion is more 
monstrous, in fact, than that which regards the Holy 
Spirit as having no agency in the immature souls of 
children who are growing up, helpless and unconscious, 
into the perils of time ? * The child cannot under- 
stand, of course, in the eariiest stage of childhood, the 
philosophy of religion as a renovated experience, and 
that is not the form of liie first lesson he is to receive. 
We are to understand that a right spirit may be 
virtually exercised in children, when, as yet, it is not 
intellectually received, or as a form of doctrine. Thus, 
if they are put upon an efibrt to be good, connecting 
the fact that God desires it, and will help them in the 
endeavour, this is all which, in a very early age, they 
can receive, and that includes everything — ^repentance, 
love, duty, dependence, &ith. Nay, the operative truth 
necessary to a new life, may possibly be communicated 
through and from the parent, being revealed in his 
looks, manners, and ways of life, before they are of 
an age to understand the teaching of words : for the 
Christian scheme, the Gospel, is really wrapped up in 
the life of every Christian parent, and beams out from 
him as a living epistle, before it escapes from the lips, 



BX>MB>1U>nCAXIOX. 145 

Or is taught ib words. And the Spirit of truth may as 
well make this living truth efTectaal, as the preaching 
of the Gospel iUelf. Never is it too learlj for good to 
be communicated. . Infancy and childhood are the ages 
most pliant to good. And who can think it necessary 
that the plastic nature of childhood must fir9t be har* 
dened into stone, and stiffened into enmity towards 
God and all duty, biefore it can become a candidate for 
Christian character? . Th^ere could not be a^more un- 
necessary . mistake, and it is as unnatural and perni- 
cious, I fear, as it is unnecessary." * 

These statements are all confirmed by observing the 
loving kindness of the Lord in His actual dealings 
towards His Church. It is remarkable, in the Old 
Testament, how frequently we see ^ety following a 
line of succession, - as in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
Joseph ; or appearing iearly, if at all, as in Samuel, 
David, jJosiah, and DanieL . Yet polygamy, which 
was contrary, to the wise appointment of God, was 
almost destructlTe of true family life, and made the 
holy school of home impossible. We have similar 
traces, in the New Testament, of piety continuing in 
the line of famiHes-^-^as when we read of a Timothy 
knowing the Holy Scriptures '' from a child," and pos- 
sesedng an '' unfeigned faith " which <^ first dwelt " in 
his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. The 
same fact, we are persuaded, is still more frequently 
seen in the Church now. ^' It was long ago observed," 
says a vnse and judicious writer, ^^ and the observation 

• BndiMlLoiiiaMMfn HurWm, p. 18. 



i 



1 46 BOMB VDUOAXlGa. 

oaght to sink deep into our heartS) of both the old and 
yoang profeesors, that where the Gospel is enjoyed ia 
its parity, it is the ordinary method of Providence to 
call sinnefB into the fellowship of Jesus Christ in the 
days of their youth. Among those who have enjoyed 
from their childhood the benefit of religious instructi<»Ei, 
of holy eocample, of sound and fiiithful ministrations, 
the instances of conversion after middle life are, for the 
most part, extremely rare. Let the aged Ghristiaa ran 
over in his mind such of these instances as hare come 
within his own knowledge, and we shaU be much de- 
ceived if his list be not rery short."* 

To the same effect Mr. Barnes of Philadelplna 
writes, when oommentittg on the well known and 
beautiful verse :^ — ^^As for me, this is my covenant 
with them, saith the Lords My Spirit that is upon 
thee, and my woards which I have put in thy mouth, 
shall not dqpiart out of ihy mouth, nor.oot of the 
mouth of tl^ seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's 
seed, sa&lh the Lord, from .hencelbrth and for ever." 
«< There iS' no promise," be says, *' of the Bible that 
is more full of eonsdation to the pious^ or thai has 
been more strikingly fulfilled thfm this. And tho^h 
it is true, that not all the children of holy parents be- 
come truly pious; though there are instances where 
they are signally wicked and .abandoDed, yet it is also 
true, that rich spixituol blessings are imparted to the 
posterity of those who serve God, and who keep His 
commandments. The great majority of those who be- 

• Dr Umoa^ (New Yorii) iE««itf<«n tft* Chmdk, t». iM. 



HOME EDDOA.TION. 147 

come religioas, are the descendants of those who were 
themselves the friends of Grod. Those who now com- 
pose the Christian churches the worid over, are not those 
generally who have been taken from the wajs of open 
vice and profligacy, from the ranks of infidelity, or 
from the immediate descendants of scofferSi drunkards, 
or blasphemers. Such men usually tread, for a lew 
generittions at least, in the footsteps of their Others. 
The Church is composed mainly of the descendants of 
those who have been true Christians, and who tnmed 
their children to waUc in the w€af$ qf pure religion. It 
is also a &ct, that comparatively a large proportion of 
the descendants of the pious themselves, for many 
generations, become true Christians.'' 

And why should this sur{»ise us ? Why should a 
Christian parent have such weak &ith in these bless- 
ings being realized in his own family, when he con- 
siders for a moment on what his hopes are based. 
There is, first of ail, the law of habit^ already so fre- 
quentiy alluded to— that marvelous power which, 
once it possesses the soul, holds it fast atid strong 
Tvith an almost irresistible despotism of good or evil^ 
For we all know how the circumstances of our early 
Hfe mould our later years ; how the impressions then 
made can never be wholly effaced ; and how, though 
in many respects we become difierent persons, yet 
in many more we remain essentially the same. The 
kind of music which delighted us in our youth, or 
the songs that lulled us in our in&ncy to repose; 
the character of the scenery which daily spread: 



148 HOMB EDUOATIOK. 

itself before our eje ; the ideas and manners of the 
people with whom we mingled ; the habits of the 
companions who shared onr early sports and our fresh 
affections ; the leading features of our family history, 
whether these were poor or prosperous, glad or sor- 
rowful ; and, though last not least, the character of 
our school teachers, their words and looks, their smiles 
or frowns — these and such like influences combine to 
make up a power which acts and tells upon us for 
ever. Yet far more powerful than all, to shape the 
fashion of our lives, and fix our future destiny, is that 
home training to good habits which I have tried to 
sketch in the preceding pages I 

But in estimating the causes which early tend to 
produce the happy result of a pious life, we must add 
to that of religious training others, which I merely 
suggest for consideration, but do ' not explain at 
length, or make the basis of my argument. Consider, 
for instance, the direct influence of the Christian 
parent, throagh that inscrutable and mysterious con- 
nexion which exists between him iand his child, in 
virtue of which, and by what has been termed a 
law of *^ organic unity," there is transmitted much of 
disposition, mental temperament, and tendencies that 
are favourable to good, by healthy-minded as well as 
by healthy-bodied parents to their offspring. There is 
also the indirect power of a parentis prayers following 
the child through life, fruitful in many answers from 
ih&t Father yrho ever lives and ever loves. There 
are the precious promises made by God to His people 



HOME SDUOATIOM. 149 

and to their children, ** beloved for their fathers' 
sakes." There are, again, the holy inflaences which 
more or less surround the child of Christian parents, 
because of his or their connesion with the Christian 
Church; — the blessings of Christian friendships and 
that training which the Church, as a society, ought to 
secure, and sometimes does secure, to its baptized 
members over and above what is afforded to them by 
the church in the house ; — such causes, in addition to 
systematic religious training, help the growth of the 
Christian life from childhood to old age. 

Yet., in spite of all that has been advanced to 
strengthen faith in the excellence of the home school, 
and in the certainty of the blessings which accompany 
or flow from the education it imparts, does not the 
anxious parent hear '^a timid voice that asks in 
whispers" many questions whose answers, prompted 
by a painful experience, sadden his heart as he gazes 
around the family circle of young and happy spirits,' 
ignorant as yet of any world beyond the joyous heaven 
of their own Christian home I He remembers other 
scenes of as sweet domestic peace, with promises as 
fair of future good, yet followed by desolation and woe* 
He can recal parents who seemed to him to have been 
wise and loving to their family, but whose hearts 
were broken by their conduct, while others of a 
grosser mould beheld with complacency and pride the 
eminent success in this world of children who never 
were trained at home to prepare for another. And 
visions dim the eye of memory of those who began a 



150 HOME EDCOATIOK. 

life 80 pure and lovelj, but ending, alas ! with some 
sad tragedj of sin. " So," as Jeremy Taylor says, 
** have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of 
its hood, and at first it was £ur aa the morning, and 
full with the- dew of heaven as a lamb's fieece ; but 
when a mder breath had forced open its virgin 
modesty, it began to put on darkness, and to dedine 
to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed 
the head, and broke the stalk ; and at night, having 
lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the 
portion of weeds and outworn faces 1" And why may 
it not be so with our own ? 

Thus, in spite of all that may be said regarding home 
education and its power, it does, nevertheless, sometiines, 
in hours of despondency, seem to one to be a theory well 
built up with words, but not able to prove itself true 
in practical Hfe, just as life is ; unfit, in short, to ^^ teach 
us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live 
soberly, righteously, and godly in ^ia present world." 
Or, to put a parent's objections and difficulties in a 
more definite shape, and to express the thoughts which 
may arise in his heart with a ferce proportioned to his 
wish to be relieved from them by getting a firm hold 
of truth, <' Is not your plan," he may ask, " of home 
education too ideal ? Is not a growing up in Christ- 
ianity a mere possibility, not a likelihood? Do not 
all children prove that conversion is needed in after 
years ? Do not the ill brought up children of many 
irreligious families oft»n turn out well? Do not the 
children of pious parents as often turn out ill? Are 



jaOHB KDUCATION. 1 5 ] 

not all these things against us!" With the risk of 
taxing the patience of my reader, but with the eager 
desire of being able still more to strengthen the faith 
and hope of Christian parents, I shall, as shortly as 
posdble, notioe in detail those 

DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 

1. <' T/ie system of home education suggested is idealJ* 
In what respect T Not in the end which it proposes^ 
for that is.pietj; surety not in the means bj which 
this end is to be attained, for these are parental and 
pious educations nor in daring to expect a good result, 
for that, we maintain, is secured by the arrangements 
of God's moral government Remember that, al* 
though in the pursuit of this as well as of every other 
high and great good, we may never be able fully to 
realize our ideal, yet woe be to us if we have no 
ideal to realize, or hopelessly give it up altogether! 
God in eveiy thing sets perfection before us, because 
He is in aU things himself perfect, and desires that we 
should be like himself in all things. Noble aims cre- 
ate noble efforts. He alone who believes in the high 
calling of God to his children, will earnestly labour 
that they may walk worthily of that calling. And if 
he does not realize all that is desirable— -for perfection 
is not attained in this world — he may yet realize all 
that, in this world, and in his circumstances, is possible; 
and his children consequently will be found walk- 
ing along the road that leads to increasing degrees of 
good here and to perfection hereafter, always accepted 



15? * BOMB XDUCATION. 

in Christ and "blessed bj God. The man whose aim 
is highy may fJEiil, indeed, in his attempts to reach it, 
jet how far higher will his lowest be than the highest 
of the man who has no aim at alll The wisest 
husbandman may never see his ideal farm realized; 
nor the greatest artist his ideal picture upon canvass; 
nor the greatest patriots and ablest statesmen their 
ideal government established; far less can the most 
earnest minded Christian reach that moral perfection, 
the stature of the perfect man, to which he is neverthe- 
less growing, nor the best parent see his children, any 
more than himself, fully realize all that God would 
have them be ; but, oh ! how much more will each of 
those possess of what they thus skilfully and patiently 
labour for, than all others who have no such ideal 
future to stimulate their labours I How much Ijjetter will 
the farm be than if an ignorant sluggard tilled it ; the 
government than if savages constructed it ; the earnest 
though sinful man, than if evil ruled him ; and the 
children than if their parents had no wise plan, no 
definite object to guide them, nor took any pains in 
their upbringing ! 

The home education suggested in this volume does 
not, therefore, seem to me to be ideal, but practical, and 
such as good common sense, guided by Christian prin* 
ciples, is calculated, in ordinary circumstances, of afford- 
ing, through the parents, to every member of a family. 

It is asked again as an objection^— 

2. " Is not the growing up in Christianity only a poS' 
siUlity^ not a likelihood 1" I have little to say upon 



HOME EDUCATION. 153 

this point in addition to vrhat has been already ad- 
vanced to prove the truth objected to. If children, as 
they grow up, really prove by their actions that they 
are unprincipled and governed by evil ; — if they habit' 
ually act contrary to conscience and have no fear of 
God before their eyes, then out of this state they must 
assuredly be brought, and by God's help trained to a 
better, for ^' whosoever doeth not righteousness is not 
of God." But take heed, lest, while you expect more 
than this from a child, you may not also expect too 
much, and demand the same kind of evidences of 
piety and principle from him as from a strong man 
in Christ What would be true to the one would be 
false in the other ; and the life may in both exist, while 
the forms in which it manifests itself in each may be 
very different. Remember the young and tender plant 
is growing, not grown. It may have hardly risen 
above the earth. It is but prqMting to blossom and 
bring forth iruit, while a night's frost can so nip its 
buds, and suddenly retard its progress, that it may seem 
to be quite withered and dead, though it still lives and is 
ready soon again to rise and struggle onwards to attain 
its full strength and beauty. When, however, as the re- 
sult of- Christian education, there is seen in a child even 
such features of character as a loving heart, a disposi- 
tion to follow its sense of right, an habitual endeavour 
to obey its parents and the like, one may hope that such 
streams may flow from a fountain higher and deeper 
than the child can yet know or ever fathom, and that its 
future progress will not so much be from death to life, as 



154 HOME bduoahon. 

from some real life to life more abondantlj, — not so much 
from darkness to ligbt, as from early dawn to abrigbter 
sunshine. Forbid tbat I sbould appear to be contented 
witb the day of small tbings, but neither would I despise 
it or be ungrateful for it. To call good evil is as un- 
true and hurtful to us as to call evil good. There is 
one rule, however, which we may safely follow, and 
that is, to endeavour in eveiy case to make a child 
better, but in no case to make him worse than he 
really is ! 

3. ^' DonotAe HI brevght t^ chUdrm of many trreU- 

gwu8 foBmilies often turn out well f " Here, again, I must 

caution observers to be careful as to their facts. Are 

you sure that those £unilies were irreligious? May 

not an education substantially sound in principle, and 

with many marks of wisdom in it, have been afforded, 

though wanting some features which you erroneously 

deem esaenticdy or others which, it is granted by all, 

would have made it much more satisfactory. How do 

you know what influences from some relation or friend 

may have been brought to bear upon the children, 

sufficient to counteract the evil in their education 

which was visible to all ? And how, apart from those 

in the £unily, can the innnnierable Christian forces 

that dwell in every Christian land be estimated, which 

tend to mould the mind and bend the will to good ! 

But even admitting all that I have alleged to be true, 

it is not asserted that a child of wicked parents is 

doomed, so that he cannot become pious ; forbid such 

a thought ! God says, << If he," the wicked parent^ 



HOMB EDUCATIOK. 155 

*Meft a son that seeth all his Other's sins whieh he 
hath done, and eonsidereth, and doeth not such like, 
he shall not die for ihe iniquity of his father; he 
shall sureljr live. Yet saj je whjf Doth not ihh 
son bear the iniquity of his father? When the son 
hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath 
kept all my statutes and done them, he shall sordy 
live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die I " And few 
things, I may say in passing, evidence more strikingly 
and touchingly the power of Christian principle, than 
when it thus elevates a child above the evil influences 
of home ; nor does anything exhibit in more dreadful 
colours the confusion and the selfishness of sin, than 
when home itself becomes a hotbed of vice, and a school 
for iniquity; when this refuge is changed into a prison, 
and the house of prayer into a den of thieves ; when 
the parent, who should be reverenced as God's image 
in the family, becomes so lowered, even in his own 
eyes, that he fears the rebuke of his child's look, and, 
Saul like, is jealous of the superior excellence of his 
life, which he wiU not imitate, and cannot, though he 
would, destroy! 

Such escapes, however, by children are compara- 
tively rare, though we may notice it as an evidence 
of God's merciful providence that there are many more 
arrests of the natural and legitimate consequences of 
bad than of pious training, and more failures in the 
evil which the one, than in the good which the other, 
tends to produce. 

Bat, keeping all this in view, it s^ holds true as a 



156 HOKB EDUCATION. 

rule that wicked apbringing produces wicked apgrow- 
ing. Shew me a child reared amidst scenes of profli- 
gacy, whose ears never heard a prayer ascend firom 
beneath the parental roof, or the name of God or of 
Jesos uttered except in oaths; whose eyes never saw 
in its parent an example, but snch as it was iniquitj 
to admire, and a virtue to abhor; who was daily 
trained up in habits of disobedience, Ijdng, irreverence, 
idleness, and dishonesty, — and in that child it is not 
difficult to see a wicked manhood, followed by a wicked 
old age ! This is a result which aU who are acquainted 
with the family look for. When it happens, no^ one is 
surprised. Does any one express their wonder at the 
godlessness of the children ? — " What else could you 
expect 1" say all who knew the godlessness of the 
parents. 

But this you say is an extreme case ; and you point 
to very many, perhaps the great majority of those 
met with in everyday life, who belong neither to the 
pious nor to the depraved; who have not received 
anything Uke godly upbringing; but who, nevertheless, 
are useful and honourable citizens; amiable and be- 
loved members of their own families; kind and con- 
siderate neighbours; staunch and loyal friends ! There 
are, I admit, many such in the world, whom to know 
is to love and value. And of those there are not a few 
who may be possessed of a deeper and more enduring 
life, which they have received through a home edu- 
cation, conducted, we repeat it, in a very imperfect, 
unsystematic, and peculiar, yet, in the main, Christian 



HOME EDUOATIOK. 157 

form — but who are rashly coDdemned by those who 
'^' have had greater advantages, and are set down as 
-' "worldly," "godless** — because they do not come tip 
^ to their standard, and pronounce their " shibboleth,*' 
'^ nor express their inner life with the words, nor in the 
^ &shion, which a particular time or school may sane* 
^'' tion. But not overlooking such cases, others un- 
^ doubtedly occur, in which there has beep in youth a 
^ home education conducted without religion, and conse- 
quently there is now a manhood spent without piety; 
^' yet a manhood characterized by all the amiable, 
? honourable, and attractive traits of character which 
' have been already alluded to. Such cases, however, 
-' only illustrate the principles we have urged. They 
^ prove that the character of the family, in after life, 
generally corresponds to the character impressed upon 
it in youth, — that parents, according to the end they 

• aim at, and the labour they bestow in attaining it, 

• will have " thdr reward.** Accordingly, they who seek 
' for their children honour,' industry, prudence, kind- 
' ness, usefulness in society, and the like, may be rc-^ 
^ warded by their possession of those blessings ; but as 

they did not desire that God^ above all, should be loved, 
and His favour, above all, enjoyed by their children, 
they are,' consequently, not surprised or disappointed 
though He is not in all their thoughts. Yet let me say 
to parents who thus act, What security have you, except 
in real Christian principle, that all the weak defences 
of natural character, however strong, shall not, at any 
moment, give way before temptation to the flood of 



158 JBOUB SDUCATION. ' 

evil passion, ftnd your child, io^whoim joa boast, and 
on whom jou rely with such confidence, be at last 
drowned in his own iniquities t But should no such 
vis&la destruction of natural character take place here, 
and should the life of Ihe child so brought up hj jon 
pass away in the unbroken sunshine of worldly favour 
and prosperity, gladdened every day by the deserved 
respect of society, the intercourse of loving firiends, 
and the enjoyment of those rewards which an affec- 
tionate, generous, and. honourable man can never fail 
to receive^^^can such h result as this, I ask, satisfy 
those who believe that true love to Jesus Christ is 
alone ti*ue religion, or that life eternal is to know God 
and Jesus Christ whom He has sent T If not, then it 
follows that no amount of success in life, no mere 
worldly respectability or morality, which a heathen or 
ecmfessed alhetflt might possess, prove that the god- 
less education has £dled in produdng its godless &uits. 
I care not what may be said in &vour of the peculiar 
*< way" in which the child has been trained up. It is 
a wrong way— one that leads from life to death, if it 
leads not to Jesus Christ, or makes a man idolize him- 
self rather than humbly follow his Saviour. It is a 
godless way if God is not its end. 

Home education had, in a very remarkable instance, 
been so successful in its results, that the child, when be 
became a young man, grew rich, and had great pos- 
sessions, and withM was so sincere and earnest, that be 
went to Christ, and, kneeling before Him, asked the 
way to life eternal ; nay more, that young man was so 



BOKK sdocahok; 159 

pure and exeellent in his outward condo^ thai he 
walked in the commandments of the law blameless, 
and was in all respects so good, ihat Jeans, looking 
on him, loTed him I Now, how few parents aim at 
produeing sach resnlts as these event How many 
would think it only ^ ideal" to expect them in iheiir 
children? How few would ever think it necessary to 
pray and strive for more, and rest satisfied with nothing 
short of thdr beloved child advancing fiirther still, and 
never haltiag until he resigned himself wholiy to Christ, 
forsook all that hindered him from taking up his cross 
and foUowiDg his Lord in. mind and ^irit for ever! 
Yet, mack it welll suck a young man as I have 
described above was he of whom we read in the 
(Sospel, who with this very diaracter and these hopes 
came to Jesus, yet went away sorrowful from Him ! 
And would any parent take comfort to himself if he 
bdield his own child thus depart from his Saviour? 
Would any amount of real or suj^osed excellence 
console him for that sad and solemn turning away? 
Whatever else had been accomplished, would he not 
experience an unutterabld sense of future danger as he 
watched his beloved one going away with a sorrowful 
countenance fnmi his Lord, althou^ he returned to a 
splendid home which he had never dishonoured, and 
in the acknowledged possession of a character which 
was unimpeachable for its moral worth, viewed merely 
in relation to the claims of men ? Oh, surely the 
narrative which has been recorded by the Judge of all 
the earth for our warning and instruction in righteous^ 



160 HOKE BDUOATIOIIV 

nessy teaches us this At least, that ivhatever else a man 
may turn to, yet in God's sight *' he turns out ill" when 
he turns Awajflrom the Saviour I Parents, therefore, 
should not take comfort to themselves until they have 
good hope that their children practically resolve to 
carry their cross, and thus follow Christ, in inind and 
spirit, wherever He goetlu 

8. Finally, it is alleged as another difficulty and 
discouragement, that ckUdren toAo have been trained up 
by pious parents in the way ih&f should go, depart from 
that way in c^ter years as frequently as those who have 
not had these advantages, I would, first of all, again 
safest doubts «s to the truth of the &cts - which are 
so frequently assumed as true, when such assertions 
are confidently made. It might be asked, for instance, 
Were the parents indeed pious? Were they reaUy 
well^principled,- sound-hearted Christians, or mere 
loud talkers, noisy zealots, or the prim and scrupulous 
adherents of some sect? Was their domestic life in 
harmony with their public profession ? Again, if truly 
pious, did they train up their children wisely? In 
spite of the many shortcomings, which more or less 
belong to the best family government on earth, was 
theirs, oa the whole, firm, loving, and Christian t 
Were there not such palpable defects in £Btlher, 
mother, or in the general spirit pf the family, as sadly 
marred the home education?*' Was there no mental 
defect in the children themselves? In what dream- 
stances were they launched into tiie world? tJnder 
iwhose auspices? Are you quite sure, in short, that 



.HOBIE BDUOATIOH. 161 

the h<Mne school had a fait tf'kU in these instances 
which jou point out as proo& of its inefficiency! I 
deny the truth of the alleged fact that the children of 
pious parents turn out ill, and maintain, on the con- 
trary, that we are warranted from observation in coming 
to the very opposite conclusion, and can point every- 
where to the children of Chrislian parents whose lives 
vindicate the high claims of a right home education. 

As an interesting proof of this, I must again 
lai^ely quote from Barnes's comment on Isaiah lix. 21. 
He says : ^^ I know that it is often thought, and espe^ 
cially that it is often said, that the children of clergymen 
are less virtuous and religious than others. But it should 
be remembered, that such cases are more prominent 
than others — ^that they attn^ct attention^--and especially 
that the profane and the wicked have a malicious plea- 
sure in making them the subject of remark. The son of a 
drunkard will be intemperate without attracting notice, 
for such a result is expected ; the son of an infidel will 
be an infidel ; the son of a scoffer will be a scoffer ; of 
a thief, a thief; of a licentious man, licentious, with« 
out being the subject of special remark. It is expected, 
and is regarded as a matter of course. But when the 
son of an eminent Christian is profane, licentious, or 
an infidel'-*-when he treads the path of open profligacy, 
it at once excites remark, because such is not the ustial 
course, and is not usually eocpecied ; and because a wicked 
world has pleasure in marking the case, and calum- 
niating religion through the prominent instance of 
imperfection and sin. But such is not the common 

L 



^ 



"< 



162 . Bomm bducahon. 

result of religioiiJB training. Some of the moist do- 
Totedlj pious t>eople oi tbia land, (Ammca,) are 'the 
descendants of thA Hugoiiots who were expelled from 
-France* A yeiy large proportion of all the piety in 
this country has been derived from the * Pilgrims' 
who landed on the rock of Pljmoath, and God has 
^bl^sed dieir descendants in New En^and and else- 
where with numerOiiJs revirals of religion^ I am 
acquainted with, the descendants of J<^m Bogers, the 
^rst martyr in Queea Mary's reign, of the tenth and 
elevenith generadons. With a single elKception, the 
eldest sOn in the filimly had been a deig^^nan; eome 
of them emineonily* diatingui^ed for leaning and piety ; 
and there «re few ftunilies <tKQW in diiil land a greater 
proportion of whom ore jnous, than of that family. 
-Thie following statiadcal aoeontity made of a limited 
section of the couBtcy> not move faroured ixt more dis* 
tii^gpiished for fmty than many others, accords un«- 
dottbtedly mih eimilstr ^MSts which are constantly 
ocQurting in the ftmllies of those who are the friends 
of religKA» The Secretaiy of the Massachusetts 
Sabbath St^hbol. Society made i9i limited investigation 
this year, (1^38) ^ the purpose of ascertaining the 
&cts about the l^gioils character of the families of 
ministers and deacons, with reference to the charge so 
often urged, tha^ the ' sons and daughters of ministers 
and deacons weitB worse than common childi^n.' The 
following is the result : — In 2&8 £uBilies which he can* 
vassed, he found 1290 children over fifteen years of 
fige. Of these childi^en, SSiy^atmost three-fourths^ are hope*' 



\ 



HOME BDUCATION. 163 

fnllyjmus^ 79i bave united with the churches; sixt^- 
one entered theiiiinijstry; 011I7 eeyenteem are dissipated, 
and ahout half only of these became so while with 
their parents. In eleven of these fiunilies, there are 
123 children^.and aU but seyea pdoiija. Jn fiflij-six of 
these fatuUes, therf are 249 children over fifteen, 
and ail hopefhlly pious. When and where can any 
such result be found iii the families of infidels, of the 
Ticfova, or of irreligipus mifin T Indeedf it is the ^eat 
law by which religion and virtue are spread and per- 
petuated in the worlds that God is faithful to this 
borenant, and that He blesses die efforts of His fiiends 
in endeavooriDig to train up gonerations for His service. 
AH piouft persons should repose on this promise of a 
&,ithM Gk)d. They may and should believe, that it is 
His design to joerpetucUe religion in the families of those 
who tndg serve amd obey Em, They should be faith- 
ful in imparting religious truth — faithM in prayer — 
£uthiB]l in a meek, holy, pure^ aad benevolent example ; 
they should so lite,4hat their children might safely tread 
in their foolBteps; they shpuld look to God for His bless- 
ing on their efibrts,aAd their efEbrts will not be in vain. 
Thef shall see their children walk in the ways of 
-virtue ; and when they die, they may leave the world 
with unwavering confidence, that God will not sufier 
His faithfulness to fail — that He will not break His 
covenant, nor alter the thing that is gone out of His 
lips.*' 

This is surely most cheering to Christian pserentsl 
But, notwithstanding all that has been said to the 



164 HOME SDUCATIOir. 

dame effect, ezceptional cases, I admit, will occur to 
the general rule — never, I believe, that of a whole 
fiunilj, but sometimes of one, or may be more, stray 
members of it, in whom an early training, signally 
blessed to the others^ has apparently failed in saving 
them from the service of sin. These, alas ! are the 
dead branches in an otherwise fair and comely tree ; 
these are the family blots, its only shame, its heaviest 
burthen, and sorest chastisement. Their names cast 
a shadow around the fireside, and are followed by 
expressive silence, a drooping head, a sigh or tear. 
God hears tiiem mentioned every day in secret, and 
accompanied often by groans of anguish from a parent's 
anxious and troubled heart, as in prayer are bowed 
down the grey hairs which the selfish prodigal is 
bringing with sorrow to the grave. These are the 
sinners whose deaths make ^^ sorrow's crown of 
sorrow," and cause a wail of agony to ascend to heaven, 
the most terrible which a parent can ever experience 
in this world, when, without hope, he cries, " O my 
son Absalom, my son, my son ! would God I had died 
for thee, Absalom, my son, my son I" 

Oh horrible ingratitude ! Oh cursed and cruel sel- 
fishness ! when, to gratify some passion, and seize the 
wages of iniquity, a child can thus break through the 
holy charities of home, wither the most beautiful affec- 
tions of a sister or brother's heart, and trample with 
an iron heel on a parent's crushed and broken spirit ! 
But such is the demon power of sin I It can thus sepa- 
rate from the holiest and most loving family on earth. 



nous BDUCATTOK. . 1 65 

disown and dishonour parents, because it can disown 
and dishonour God. Without remorse, it can hear our 
Father in heaven say, " I have nourished and brought 
jou up as children, but je have rebelled against me !" 
— how can it then be concerned for a &ther on earth ? 
Without emotion it can behold Jesus weep, and hear 
Him exclaim, "How oflen would I have gathered 
you, but you would not!" — how can it feel more for 
any other brother who mourns for and could die to 
save the impenitent one I The mystery of iniquity is 
indeed great! The individual being can assert the 
awful power which God has given him as a responsible 
being, and may refuse to be subject to God or man. 
But verily there is a God that judgeth the earth ! — ^and 
if there be one man who more than another is heaping 
up to himself wrath agalost the day of wrath, it is the 
perverse and rebellious child of pious parents, — the 
selfish, unprincipled wanderer fix)m a Christian home I 
A great dramatist* has described with terrible 
vividness the terrors of conscience, creating, and 
created by, a dream, in which a son, who had mur- 
dered a father, beholds the day of judgment, with all 
its dread accompaniments. The trumpet sounds ; the 
elements melt with fervent heat ; the dead are raised ; 
the Judge appears; the murderer's name at last is 
called; and, with fear and trembling, he obeys the 
summons. The Judge holds in his hand a mighty 
balance that swings between earth and heaven. In 

• Schiller, in fhe well.known scene between Franz and Daniel, in the 
last act of " The Robbers." 



166 BOME EDTTOATION. 

one scale the deadty sins' of the wretched criminal are 
placed, untirthey are mountains in bulk ; but the blood 
of atonement in the other ecaTe, meanwhile, diilweigbs 
them all. At la^ an (M man appears, bowed down 
with signs of gne£; all ^es are turned upon him ; the 
murderer knows him well, and sees him with horror 
approach the balance. The old man cuis one lock from 
ht8 grey haivB^ and ecmts it into the dcale fiM of crime; and, 
lo I it sinks to the earth, and a voice is heard saying, 
*' There is mercy for all other sinners, but none for 
thee!" 

But we dare not lose hope, on this side of the grave, 
even of the prodigal who has gone to a far country, 
and is cared for only by those parents whom he has 
most deeply injured, but whose undying love for him 
can never grow cold but in the grave. While life 
lasts we cannot fix a limit, beyond which his early 
training may not be blessed by God as the means of 
restoring his soul, and causing him again' to walk in a 
path of righteousness. The touching memories and 
early in:flnences of the holy past are seldom obliterated 
from the hardest heart. Its '* old familiar faces'* never 
cease to gaze upon him, and to beckon him with a^Tec- 
tionate entreaty to return. He cannot, if he would, 
forget the 

'* Rind looks, kind words, and tender greetings, 
'Mrixm clMpiiig hiOids wfaoM pulses beat no more.* 

The Christian home of his youth ever and anon comes 
back like a holy religion of the heart, and seems a green 
oasis of rest amidst the weary wilderness of sin . The re- 



BOMB bducahok. 1 G7 

membTances of a father's worth and of a mother's love, 
—of prayers poured forth around the familj altar, — of 
praises once heard from lips long ago silent in the grave, 
— of parental advices and instructions, — of days of be- 
reavement, when around the bed of death hearts now 
idienaied were knit together by a sense of a common 
sorrow,— of days of sunshine, when faith and love, 
from that calm retreat, made the fhture glorious which 
has become through sin a dark and dreary past ;'^Ah ! 
these are influences that 

Perish merer ; 
Wbieb neither )ieUeMiieM. nw pi^d fodeaTQur, ' 

Kor loan nor boy. 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy. 
Can ^tt«rly wbQliiih or destroy i 

Like those brilliant corruscations which flash across 
the midnight of a wintry aky, these holy recollections 
may suddenly rush across the wanderer's soul, and 
illumine it with a heavenly and more enduring light ! 
The seed sown by the parents' hands, with many de- 
sponding tears, may be. covered by the snows of an 
inclement season, and seem dead and lost for ever; 
but a spring-time may yet come from the quicken- 
ing Spirit of God, when the seed shall at last ap- 
pear, first the blade, then the ear, and soon the full 
com in the ear I And it may be in a distant land — on 
a dying bed-<^or even in a prison's darkest cell, that a 
parent's prayers may at last be answered, as his long- 
lost child cries out, in the anguish of his own penitent 
soul, but to the joy of ministering angels, " I will arise 
and go to my Father!" Again we say, with un- 



1G8 HOME EDUCATION. 

shaken convictioii in its truth, '* Train up a child in 
the way he should go, and when he is old he will not 
depart from it!" 

We would cherish the hope, that even Solomon, 
who spoke these words, lived to know their truth in 
his own latest experience : — that he who though, 
during a long life, one of the wisest of men, was at 
last led into grievous sin, did not in the end die a fool ; 
but was brought back to the path in which he was 
trained up in his early years, when he was *' taught by 
his father," and was " tender and only beloved of his 
mother." Did not the sorrows, the confessions, and 
lofty aspirations of " the Preacher," survive the sins 
and follies of the king T Did not the stream, lost for a 
time in the sand, reappear? Was there not some 
connexion between his early training and that remark- 
able utterance of his latest and deepest convictions, in 
which he sums up the varied experience of his whole 
life — '' Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : 
Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is 
the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every 
work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether 
it be good, or whether it be evil." 

But I must bring these Hints to a conclusion, lest I 
should weary my readers by "much speaking;" yet 
I feel it difficult to part company with those whom I 
wish to aid as a brother with words of warning and 
of cheer, ere we each pursue our respective journeys, 
to practise by God's help what we believe to be His 
will. One or two stray thoughts occur to me, which 



HOMS SDUOATION* 169 

I will utter as they come^ before saying farewell, and, 
as a 

CONCLUSION. 

Do not, I beseech of you, ever look <m duty, how- 
ever difficult, as work assigned by a hard master, but 
as blessed labour which Jesus calls us to perform as 
^Z/ou7-labourers with himself; — labour in, and from 
which, when done in His Spirit, we shall assuredly 
share His joy, not only by ourselTCS being made more 
perfect and more able to receive larger measures of 
blessedness, but also by our aiding others to share our 
own good and happiness in God. 

But of all labour, esteem most highly that of training 
your own dear children for time and eternity ! It is 
recognised by Jesus as a source of true joy, when <^ a 
man is bom into the world I " It ought to be so to every 
parent, when it is such a world, that our children, in 
entering it, may be baptized into the name of God as 
their Father, Jesus as their Saviour, and the Holy 
Ghost as their Sanctifier I Life has sufficient charms 
for a Christian parent to make him bless God for its 
existence and continuance, had he no other work to 
do, or joy to experience, than that of training his 
children for glory, and doing so as a fdlow-labourer 
with the Godhead I 

But no time must he hsL The Master gives every 
servant time sufficient, but not too much, for his work. 
If the "twelve hours in the day" are not too few, 
neither are they too many. " The night cometh^ 
should not be forgotten by the parent, especially when 



170 HOUB EDUCATION. 

twilight shadows may be sombering his path. Earnest- 
ness and immediate action are the more necessary, 
when it is remembered that other influences are con- 
stantJj at work trainii^ the child up in the way he 
should not go. His ear will hear bad instructions, Im 
eye catch bad examples. The world without will find a 
soil in the heart within prepared to receive all the bad 
seed which it sows day and nights Satan ia edai- 
cating, in a thousand ways, with all his subftety and 
wiles. Evil is bu^; tberelbre, '^ what thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with all thy might.*' 

Does any parent who reads these words experience 
the revival of an old grief caused by the memory of 
beloved children whose education was looked forward 
to as a delightful task, and whose in&ncy was watched 
with anxioud longing as the new and beauteous morn- 
ing of w)iat was hoped to be a long and happy day, but 
whose sun, "trailing clouds of glory," had hardly 
gilded the horizon with its beams, ere it set for ever 
in darkness I ' Sad, indeed, are those gaps in the Bimily 
cirde ; bitter ia the parent's ciy, " Joseph is not, and 
Simeon is not;'' and bitter are his fears lest Benjamin 
also should be taken away* But there is a comfort 
for such mourners, because there is hope in such 
deaths I These children live. Dying in infancy they 
are',—- who dare doubt itt — saved for ever. They have 
passed to the better home school above in their Father's 
bouse, and they are educating there by the Great 
Teacher, who has brought them to himselfl Not in 
vain have parents lived who have contributed glori- 



HOME EDUCATION. 171 

fied spirits to Kve for ever with God ! Not in vain 
have their prayers for these lambs been offered to the 
Good Shepherd, when He took them to His bosom 
and brought them into the fold above, to be there 
kept secure until the old sheep should follow. Beau- 
tifullj has ^e poet said, — 

There is no flock, howerer watched and tendodt 

Bnt one dead lamb la there ! 
Th»o ift DO fireside howaoe'ev defended. 

But baa a vacant chair. 

She is not dead— the child of our affection^ 

But g^one unto that school 
Where she bo longer needA our poor protACtloii, 

And Christ himself doth rule. 

Not as a child shall we again behold hoTt 

For when, with raptures wild. 
In our embracee we agaia enfold Iwr, 

She will not be a child. 

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion. 

Clothed with celestial peace } 
And beautiful with all th» soars t zpaiuion 

Shall we behold her fkce ! 

And now what more can X say, Christian parents, 
to comfort you regarding the dead, or to cheer you on 
to train up the living, than by directing your eyes, ere 
we part, to the eternal future. For when this earthly 
life is ended, the blessed results of home education 
have not ended with it! These remain for ever. 
Brighter rewards than were ever reaped upon earth 
await Christian parents beyond the grave. They and 
their children must again meet. The whole family 
will appear together before the judgment-seat. Then 
will be fully traced out, what can be perceived but 



172 HOME EDUC ATIOK. 

dimlj here, — ^tbe moral connexion between one gene- 
ration and another, and the wide-spread and long- 
enduring effects of home education. Who can con- 
ceiv-e the rewards which pious parents will receive upon 
that day! Whatever success attended their labours 
here — though all may apparently have been in vain — 
they will still have the inexpressible consolation of 
hearing their Lord commend them as '* good ajid faith- 
ful servants." But should their labours have been 
owned by God as a means of saving the souls of their 
children ; should they be then able to adopt their 
Master's words, and say to Him in peace, ^^ Behold us 
and the children whom thou hast given us," — ^if every 
child is there, not one missing, but all saved, — each, 
too, pointing to those joyful parents a9 having been the 
honoured instruments in bringing them to Christ, and 
through Christ to glory; — if, moreover, several genera- 
tions appear linked together as a golden chain, each 
link at once a godly parent and a godly child,-— oh ! 
who can imagine the greatness of such a reward! 
Yet this day of solemn judgment, which finishes our 
earthly dispensation, only begins the endless life of 
God's united &mily in His house above. What shall 
we say to the vision which flits before the cloudy eye 
of our faith — a family in heaven I Every danger past; 
the days of temptation or of suffering vanished away; 
the sick-bed, with its weary watchings and partings, 
never more to be repeated ; every grave emptied of its 
holy sleeper, and the sea of its dead; all are here! 
here together; here acquainted with each other as 



HOME EDUCATIOK. 173 

tliej never were . on earth; here loving each other as 
they never could love on earth; here rejoicing in the 
fellowship of Christ, and of His saints — and that^br 
ever! Surely, parents, the very thought of such re- 
wards as those might cast you on your knees before 
the Saviour, for grace to enable you to labour until 
death, if by any means they might be obtained! 
" Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, un- 
moveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, 
forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain 
in the Lord." 

I conclude by a final appeal to careless parents, in 
the words of the wise, loving, and holy Baxter : — 

^^ And now let me seriously speak to the hearts of 
those careless and ungodly parents that neglect the 
holy education of their children, yea, and to those pro-> 
fessors of godliness that slubber over so great a work 
with a few customary formal duties and words, that 
are next to a total omission of it. Oh, be not so un« 
naerciful to the souls that you have helped to bring into 
the world ! Think not so basely of them, as if they 
were not worth your labour. Make not your children 
BO like your beasts, as to make no provision but only 
for their flesh. Remember still that it is not beasts 
but men that you have begotten and brought forth ; 
educate them, then, and use them as men, for the love 
and obedience of their Maker. Oh, pity and help the 
Bouls that you have defiled and undone ! Have mercy 
on the souls that must perish in hell if they be not 
saved in this day of salvation ! Oh, help them that 



174 HOJIE EDUCATION. 

have 80 manj enemies to assault them ! Help them 
that have so many temptations to pass through, and so 
many difficulties to overcomey and so severe a ^udg* 
ment to midergo I Help them that are bo weak^ and 
so easily deceived and overthrown I Help them 
speedily while your advantajg^s continue; bef<H*e sin 
have hardened them, and grace have forsaken them, 
and Satan place a stronger garrison in their hearts. 
Help them while th^ are tractable, before they are 
grown. up to despise your help, before you and they are 
separated asunder, and your opportunities be at an end. 
You think not your pains from year to year too mach 
to make provision for their bodies : O be. not cruel to 
their souls I Sell them not to Satan, and that for 
naught I Betray them not by your ungodly negligence 
to helL Or, if any of them wi)l perish, let it not be by 
you, who are so mndi bound to do them good. The 
undoing of yoiur children's souls is a work much fitter 
for Satan tiban for their parents. 

^< Oh, dien, deny not this necessary diligence to your 
necessitous children, as yoa love their souls, as you love 
the happiness ^f the Church or commonwealth, as yon 
love the honour and interest of Christ, and as you love 
your present and everlasting peace. Do not see your 
children the slaves of Satan here, and the firebrands of 
hell for ever, if any diligence of yours may contribute 
to prevent it. Do not give conscience such matter of 
accusation against you as to say, ^ All this was long of 
thee! If thou hadst instructed them diligently, and 
watched over them, and corrected them, and done thy 



HOME EDUCATIOK. 175 

part, it is like they had never come to this!' You till 
your fields, you weed your gardens ; what pains take 
you about your grounds and cattle ! And will you not 
take more for your children's souls T Alas ! what 
creatures will they be if you leave them to themselves ! 
How ignorant, careless, rude, and beastly ! Oh, what 
a lamentable case have ungodly parents brought the 
world into I Ignorance and selfishness, beastly sensu- 
ality and devilish malignity, have covered the face of 
the earth as a deluge, and driven away wisdom, and 
self-denial, and piety, and charity, and justice, and 
temperance almost out of the world, confining them to 
the breasts of a few obscure, humble souls, that love 
virtue for virtue's sake, and look for their reward from 
God alone, and expect that, by abstaining from iniquity, 
they make themselves a prey to wolves. Wicked edu- 
cation hath unmanned the world, and subdued it to 
Satan, and made it almost like to hell. Oh, do not 
join with the sons of Belial in this unnatural wicked- 
ness." 

May the God of all the &milies of thd earth be 
pleased to bless what has been written in this little 
book, for the advancement of His " kingdom of righte- 
ousness, peace, and joy, in the Holy Ghost," by estab- 
lishing everywhere the Home Mission of Christian 
Parents, and by rearing everywhere the holy temples 
of Christian families ! 

T. 0. A. 



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